Operations Engineer (Starshield Products)

SpaceX•Palo Alto, CA

2d•$110,000 - $175,000

About The Position

The Operations Engineer on SpaceX’s Starshield Products team operates and deploys AI capabilities—including models, APIs, tools, and integrations—for U.S. federal agencies. The role works closely with product, research, infrastructure, legal, and governance teams to make AI and future models useful for missions while upholding SpaceX standards for transparency and ethics. The engineer owns the health, performance, and stability of services powering these missions, managing the end-to-end service reliability cycle from outage response through codebase improvements and durable solutions. The role involves troubleshooting critical issues for government customers, improving observability in complex systems, addressing technical debt, and informing strategic investment in core products. Periodic on-call shifts include responding to automated 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.
Must meet U.S. Government export-control eligibility requirements or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations.

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 with 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, including comfort with 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 with Docker or Kubernetes; and API orchestration.

Responsibilities

Own the health, performance, and stability of integrations between frontier AI models and government systems, platforms, and data environments.
Develop documentation, metrics, monitors, and troubleshooting tools that keep services observable and operable.
Respond to automated alerts, investigate problems reported by government customers, and drive lasting fixes.
Partner with agency stakeholders and adjacent product teams to understand operational needs, share technical expertise, and incorporate real-world feedback.
Work with agency stakeholders to understand 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 eligibility for long-term incentives in the form of company stock or long-term cash awards.
Potential discretionary bonuses.
Employee Stock Purchase Plan with the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount.
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.
Accrual of 3 weeks of paid vacation.
10 or more paid holidays per year.
Paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy.