SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.
OPERATIONS DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER (STARLINK)
As an Operations Development Engineer, you will be responsible for engineering the operational systems and processes used to support the Starlink network as it scales to millions of users around the globe. Join the team operating the network that is revolutionizing global connectivity and internet access. A successful Operations Development Engineer will create the tools, technology and processes to maintain, operate and evolve the most advanced network in the solar system. You will utilize operational data to identify and prioritize various improvements that improve our operational efficiency and maintain the overall health of operations. You will work with subsystem responsible engineers, software engineers, and network engineers to develop alerts, mitigations, and terrestrial assets and drive improvements to core Starlink systems. Through continuous improvement, you will drive process and automation upgrades to the point of minimal manual intervention. You will be responsible for the complete lifecycle of the projects you own, including development, testing, deployment and support.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Develop, implement and scale Starlink Network Operations processes, automation, and tools that provide global internet access
- Design operational workflows from first principles and implement the resulting procedure, automation, and tooling
- Work with development engineering teams to drive design for operations: assess how proposed workflow and system changes affect operations health and efficiency, catch scaling issues early in the development lifecycle, and incorporate debugging tools and strategies so handover to operations is effective
- Interact with key stakeholders to identify their desired outcomes, take their inputs and deliver improvements to Network Operations owned processes
- Work with the diverse teams across the Starlink program to develop monitoring, detection and response processes that drive quick resolution to emergent network events
- Define and develop projects, milestones, and maintain roadmaps, practicing flexible prioritization and scope management to deliver on program directives
- Take extreme ownership of deliverables and make risk-conscious decisions under pressure
- Design operational systems end-to-end: alerting, detection, triage paths, handoffs, automation, and the interfaces between tools and operators
- Build and maintain scoped software and internal tooling (Python, scripting, APIs, workflow orchestration) whose customer is the live operation
- Implement AI in production operations workflows (investigation assistants, procedure retrieval, alert/ticket triage, vendor and API copilots); measure the result on toil, error rate, and time-to-restore
- Write operational specifications and success criteria for new products and services; partner with software engineering when required
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering.
- Experience in Python and SQL
- Experience building automation or operational tooling in a NOC, SOC, SRE, sysadmin, or network engineering environment
PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:
- 2+ years of experience developing software, automation, processes, or projects in a rapidly changing, highly demanding environment, with the ability to run these projects independently
- Experience designing or implementing operational systems that other operators use (procedures, automation, alerting, or internal tooling)
- Strong system design and first-principles problem solving, with a focus on operations at scale
- Familiarity with operational open-source technologies such as Prometheus, Grafana, PostgreSQL, and workflow orchestration
- Ability to work cross-functionally with operations, engineering and supply chain teams
- Experience creating detailed documentation and procedures from scratch
- Experience in optimizing and automating operational processes and workflows
- Familiarity with technology and operational concepts of internet service providers, mobile network operators, or content delivery networks
- Experience working within complex, software defined networking (SDN) and/or network function virtualization (NFV) environments
- Experience implementing AI tooling into production workflows (agents, LLM-assisted triage, retrieval over procedures/runbooks, copilots on existing ops tools)
- Experience with Linux, Git, and operational infrastructure (services, APIs, scheduling, observability)
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
- Must be able to participate in on-call rotation to support critical operations as needed
COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:
Pay Range:
Level 1: $105,000.00 - $145,000.00
Level 2: $120,000.00 - $175,000.00
Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.
Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package at SpaceX. You may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of company stock or long-term cash awards, as well as potential discretionary bonuses and the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You will also receive access to comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation and will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Employees in Washington State accrue paid sick time in compliance with state and federal law. Company shuttles are offered to employees for roundtrip travel from select Seattle locations to the SpaceX Redmond office Monday to Friday.
ITAR REQUIREMENTS:
- To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.
SpaceX is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with SpaceX is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.
Applicants wishing to view a copy of SpaceX’s Affirmative Action Plan for veterans and individuals with disabilities, or applicants requiring reasonable accommodation to the application/interview process should reach out to [email protected].
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering
- Experience with Python
- Experience with SQL
- Experience building automation or operational tooling in a NOC, SOC, SRE, systems administration, or network engineering environment
- At least 2 years of experience developing software, automation, processes, or projects in a rapidly changing, demanding environment
- Experience independently running software, automation, process, or project initiatives
- Experience designing or implementing operational systems used by operators
- Strong systems design and first-principles problem-solving skills
- Familiarity with Prometheus, Grafana, PostgreSQL, and workflow orchestration
- Ability to work cross-functionally with operations, engineering, and supply chain teams
- Experience creating detailed documentation and procedures from scratch
- Experience optimizing and automating operational processes and workflows
- Familiarity with internet service providers, mobile network operators, or content delivery networks
- Experience with software-defined networking or network function virtualization environments
- Experience implementing AI tooling into production workflows
- Experience with Linux, Git, services, APIs, scheduling, and observability
- Ability to participate in an on-call rotation
SpaceX Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about SpaceX and has not been reviewed or approved by SpaceX.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity grants are a core part of total compensation, with periodic company-run tender offers that create liquidity before any public listing. These mechanisms can make the equity component feel materially valuable in practice.
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Healthcare Strength — The package includes comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, with on-site clinics and health resources at major sites. This breadth of coverage is presented as a strong element of the offering.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Major locations feature on-site amenities such as fitness facilities, food/coffee, clinics, and other conveniences. These lifestyle perks enhance day-to-day value alongside cash and equity.
SpaceX Insights
What We Do
SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to revolutionize space transportation, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary. SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads, and returned safely to Earth — a technically challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for NASA.
