Electric Propulsion Engineer

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.

ELECTRIC PROPULSION ENGINEER, AVIONICS (STARSHIELD)

Starshield leverages SpaceX's Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts. While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads.

SpaceX is hiring an Electric Propulsion Engineer (avionics focus) to join a collaborative engineering team working on design, analysis, build, and test of high-volume, flight-qualified satellite electric propulsion systems. In this role you will contribute end-to-end hardware ownership of propulsion power-processing and control electronics—from design through production support and qualification—for hardware that must meet flight reliability requirements.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Design, analyze, test, and provide operational support for high-volume production spacecraft electric propulsion avionics (power-processing and control electronics that drive thrusters, heaters, and propellant-feed actuators)
• Lead or contribute to electrical architecture, specification, component selection, circuit-board design, implementation, verification, board bring-up, and debugging (depth in several of these areas is expected over time; prior ownership of every step is not required)
• Design, develop, and test propulsion electronics, including characterization, requirements generation and verification, and flight qualification
• Partner with firmware/software, mechanical, thermal, manufacturing, and production-test teams
• Design, build, modify, operate, and troubleshoot electric propulsion electronics and associated test setups, including vacuum-chamber electrical interfaces, high-voltage supplies, data acquisition and control systems, harnessing, and instrumentation
• Analyze and review ground-test and flight data with numerical tools (e.g., Python, MATLAB) to confirm hardware is operating as expected and inform design decisions; develop scripts as needed
• Lead root-cause investigations and board or component redesigns to improve reliability and/or production rates
• Develop and execute qualification test plans for flight readiness (vibration, shock, thermal cycle, EMI/EMC, life cycle, fault injection)
• Evaluate design and qualification coverage for new vehicles and missions; close gaps with targeted analysis or test