Operations Engineer (Starshield Products)

SpaceX•Washington, DC

2d•$100,000 - $160,000

About The Position

The Operations Engineer will operate and deploy AI capabilities—including models, APIs, tools, and integrations—for U.S. federal agencies. Working closely with product, research, infrastructure, legal, and governance teams, the engineer will help make AI and future models useful for missions while upholding SpaceX’s standards for transparency and ethics. The role owns the end-to-end reliability of services supporting these missions, from outage response through codebase improvements and lasting fixes. It includes troubleshooting critical issues for government customers, improving observability, addressing technical debt, and informing strategic product investments. Periodic on-call shifts include responding to alerts, investigating customer-reported issues, and sharing technical expertise with adjacent product teams.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or another STEM discipline, or at least 2 years of professional software development experience in lieu of a degree.
Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed.
Must successfully obtain and maintain a Top Secret Security Clearance as a condition of employment.
20% travel may be required to government sites.

Nice To Haves

At least 1 year of hands-on software engineering experience building scalable systems, APIs, or AI/ML applications; strong Python proficiency, with other languages a plus.
Experience with large language models, generative AI, or agentic systems in research, production, or applied engineering.
At least 1 year of experience working on enterprise applications serving more than 10,000 users across geographies and time zones.
Familiarity with government or public-sector technology environments, or regulated industries such as healthcare, finance, or infrastructure.
Strong product sensibility and ability to translate ambiguous stakeholder needs into concrete technical solutions.
Ability to write clean, maintainable, high-performance code under tight timelines.
Exceptional problem-solving skills and intellectual curiosity, with an ability to thrive on hard, ambiguous challenges.
Excellent communication skills, including explaining complex technical concepts clearly and concisely to non-technical partners.
Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure; containerization such as Docker or Kubernetes; and API orchestration.

Responsibilities

Own the health, performance, and stability of integrations between frontier AI models, including the Grok family, and government systems, platforms, and data environments.
Invest in documentation, metrics, monitors, and other troubleshooting tools to keep services observable and operable.
Respond to automated alerts, investigate issues reported by key government customers, and drive lasting fixes.
Partner with agency stakeholders and adjacent product teams to understand operational needs, share technical expertise, and iterate based on real-world feedback.
Understand agency requirements, prototype solutions, and iterate rapidly based on real-world feedback.
Address technical debt in essential codebases and inform strategic investments in core products.
Participate in on-call rotations during business hours and occasional weekends to maintain resilient, high-uptime production systems.

Benefits

Potential long-term incentives in the form of company stock or long-term cash awards.
Potential discretionary bonuses.
Ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
Comprehensive medical coverage.
Vision coverage.
Dental coverage.
401(k) retirement plan.
Short- and long-term disability insurance.
Life insurance.
Paid parental leave.
Various other discounts and perks.
May accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation.
Eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year.
Paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy.