Operations Development Engineer (Starlink)

SpaceX•Redmond, WA

1d•$105,000 - $175,000•Onsite

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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

Nice To Haves

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)

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

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
Access to a 401(k) retirement plan
Short and long-term disability insurance
Life insurance
Paid parental leave
Various other discounts and perks
3 weeks of paid vacation
10 or more paid holidays per year
Paid sick time in compliance with state and federal law (for employees in Washington State)
Company shuttles offered to employees for roundtrip travel from select Seattle locations to the SpaceX Redmond office Monday to Friday