Site Reliability Engineer (Starlink)

SpaceX•Palo Alto, CA

13h•$150,000 - $210,000

About The Position

SpaceX is hiring a Site Reliability Engineer for its Starlink program. The role focuses on improving the use of deployed hardware and delivering a reliable satellite internet experience. The engineer will take ownership of challenging problems and work collaboratively with other engineers to design and produce solutions that support SpaceX’s mission. Aerospace experience is not required. The position involves evolving distributed systems for sharding and geo-redundancy across multiple data centers, advancing infrastructure for deployment, monitoring, and alerting in multi-region environments, and managing large-scale bare-metal compute clusters. The engineer will contribute throughout the software development lifecycle, from inception and design through deployment, operation, and refinement, with a focus on performance improvement. Candidates must meet SpaceX’s ITAR eligibility requirements: be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee, or be eligible to obtain required U.S. Department of State authorizations. Employment is governed by merit, competence, and qualifications, consistent with SpaceX’s Equal Opportunity Employer statement.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems/IT, or an engineering discipline and at least 1 year of professional experience in systems administration, site reliability engineering, or DevOps; alternatively, at least 3 years of professional experience in those fields in lieu of a degree.
At least 1 year of professional experience with Linux operating systems.
Willingness to work extended hours and weekends when needed.
Must meet the stated U.S. Government export-control eligibility requirements or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations.

Nice To Haves

At least 1 year of experience with Python and Python-based development frameworks.
Experience with Kubernetes and Istio for on-premise deployment.
Experience troubleshooting hardware and network-layer issues.
Programming experience in Python, C#, Java, Scala, Go, or similar languages.
Good understanding of version control, testing, continuous integration, build, deployment, and monitoring.
Strong understanding of virtualization and hypervisor technologies.
Knowledge of the Linux boot process and systems configuration.
Deep understanding of testing, continuous integration, build, deployment, and continuous monitoring.
Experience automatically managing dozens, hundreds, or thousands of servers, for example with Terraform or Ansible.
Strong TCP/IP networking knowledge.
Excellent communication skills, including the ability to communicate with customers, peers, and management in formal and informal situations.

Responsibilities

Upgrade existing distributed systems to become sharded and geo-redundant in multiple data centers.
Advance deployment, monitoring, and alerting infrastructure to support a multi-region environment.
Manage petabyte-scale bare-metal compute clusters.
Collaborate with engineers across programs to create operable, scalable, and maintainable products.
Engage throughout the software development lifecycle, from service inception and design through deployment, operation, and iterative refinement.
Identify performance bottlenecks and apply performance improvement techniques.

Benefits

Potential eligibility for 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.
Access to a 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.