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.
SOFTWARE ENGINEER, PLATFORM AND INFRASTRUCTURE (STARLINK)
As a Software Engineer on the Core Infrastructure team, you will sit at the intersection of Site Reliability Engineering, Platform Engineering, and Database Reliability.
Beyond keeping systems running and responding to tickets, you will take on the role of an architectural investigator. Your mission is to anticipate the next bottleneck before it happens and help build the solution that prevents it.
Modern distributed infrastructure generates thousands of signals, alerts, and metrics every minute, and so do stakeholders. We need an engineer who can cut through the noise on both fronts.
Technically, you will identify the underlying causal problems behind alerts and implement automated, systemic fixes. Organizationally, you will approach feature tickets and infrastructure requests as investigations to uncover the true underlying need. You will work with stakeholders to find the best solution rather than simply implementing the first one proposed.
You will help build the internal developer platform that empowers our product teams to ship code securely and rapidly, while ensuring our persistence layer and infrastructure scale reliably under heavy load.
If you treat infrastructure as a software engineering problem and see reducing operational toil as a core engineering goal, this role is for you.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks by analyzing system metrics, database queries, and cloud resource usage before they impact users.
- Build and maintain the internal developer platform, including the self-service tools and CI/CD pipelines.
- Operate and secure the production Kubernetes clusters that run our customer-facing website, managed as code.
- Partner with application teams to optimize slow SQL queries and manage database schema changes safely.
- Investigate infrastructure requests to understand the real underlying need and propose better long-term solutions.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a STEM discipline.
- 1+ years of professional experience with networking or infrastructure projects.
- 1+ years of professional experience programming in Python, Go, or a similar language used in infrastructure and platform work.
- Strong attention to detail.
PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:
- Experience with Kubernetes in multi-region or large-scale environments.
- Experience with CI and DevOps pipelines, deployment tools, or related infrastructure projects (e.g., Jenkins, Bamboo, ArgoCD, Argo Workflows, Helm).
- Experience with observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ClickHouse, OpenTelemetry) and an understanding of what makes an alert accurate and actionable.
- Familiarity with relational databases (g., PostgreSQL), including indexing and query performance, especially in distributed or multi-region deployments.
- Contributions to open-source projects or development of open-source tools.
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:
- Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed.
COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:
Pay range:
Level I: $135,000.00 - $155,000.00/per year
Level II: $155,000.00 - $185,000.00/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 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 accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law.
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, engineering, or a STEM discipline.
- 1+ years of professional experience with networking or infrastructure projects.
- 1+ years of professional experience programming in Python, Go, or a similar language used in infrastructure and platform work.
- Strong attention to detail.
- Experience with Kubernetes in multi-region or large-scale environments.
- Experience with CI and DevOps pipelines or deployment tools (e.g., Jenkins, Bamboo, ArgoCD, Argo Workflows, Helm).
- Experience with observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ClickHouse, OpenTelemetry) and alerting best practices.
- Familiarity with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL), indexing and query performance in distributed/multi-region deployments.
- Contributions to open-source projects or development of open-source tools.
- Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed.
- Compliance with ITAR eligibility (U.S. citizen/national, lawful permanent resident, refugee, asylee, or eligible for required State Department authorizations).
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
