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.
SITE RELIABILITY ENGINEER (APPLICATION SOFTWARE)
The application software team is the central nervous system of SpaceX – we create mission critical applications that are used throughout SpaceX to accelerate launch vehicle production and flight as well as systems that allow Starlink to grow into a worldwide fast, reliable Internet service.
We are looking for an experienced Site Reliability Engineer to operate and scale custom-built mission-critical software products for engineering, test, and launch. These products are used to deliver the software flying rockets, spacecraft, satellites, and more - every time a Falcon 9 launches, a Dragon capsule docks with the ISS, or a Starlink satellite connects a new community, the software responsible for it was created with the tools you'll build and maintain.
SpaceX relies on our vehicle software being built quickly and correctly, tested rigorously, and rapidly iterated on. This allows us to pioneer technologies that were science fiction a decade ago; you'll work to ensure that software delivery at SpaceX keeps pace with other engineering efforts, to enable our goal of making humanity multi-planetary.
Aerospace experience is not required to be successful here - rather we look for smart, motivated, collaborative engineers who love solving problems and want to make an impact on a super inspiring mission. We are looking for engineers who treat fellow teammates with fairness, respect, and support. You will have full ownership of challenging problems, working with a team of enthusiastic engineers to design and produce solutions that enable SpaceX to move towards our goals at a rapid pace. The success of the missions at SpaceX depends on the software that you and your team produce.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Deploy, upgrade, operate/maintain, and scale our suite of mission critical products and services
- Manage our underlying infrastructure as code and use modern observability tools to tell a complete story of application health
- Closely collaborate with software engineers to create highly operable and maintainable products
- Engage in and improve the whole software development lifecycle of services -- from inception and design, through deployment, operation, and refinement
- Practice sustainable incident response and blameless postmortems
- Provide end-user support to vehicle software engineers for products
- Participate in the team’s on-call rotation periodically
- Focus on performance bottlenecks and performance improvement techniques
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, or engineering discipline; OR 3+ years of professional experience with site reliability or DevOps without a degree
- Experience with Linux operating systems
PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:
- 5+ years of DevOps, site reliability engineering, or system administration experience
- 3+ years of experience with Python and Python-based development frameworks
- Experience with source code and version control tools such as Git or Subversion
- Experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) products for automatically managing fleets of servers
- Experience with build systems (Make, Bazel/Pants/Buck, Gradle, etc.) and package management tools (pip, npm, etc.)
- Experience with both container and virtualization technologies (VirtualBox, KVM, Docker, Kubernetes, vSphere, EC2, GCE)
- Experience with Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, or other automation frameworks
- Knowledge of TCP/IP networking
- Experience with databases and data modeling
- Experience with workflow and issue management tools such as JIRA
- Ability to work with mission critical and sensitive systems, with a sense of urgency appropriate to the responsibilities
- Ability to communicate with customers, peers, management etc. in both formal and informal situations
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:
- Must be able to work extended hours and weekends as needed
COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:
Pay Range:
Site Reliability Engineer/Level I: $120,000.00 - $145,000.00/per year
Site Reliability Engineer/Level II: $140,000.00 - $170,000.00/per year
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, stock options, 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 & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation & will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Exempt employees are eligible for 5 days of sick leave per year.
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 notify the Human Resources Department at (310) 363-6000.
Top Skills
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.
