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Design Criteria Engineer (Starshield)

SpaceX· Starshield Satellite Engineering
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Hawthorne, CA$100k - $115kFull-timePosted 6mo ago

About the role

Role on the Starshield Design Criteria Engineering team focusing on design criteria, requirements, and verification approaches for satellite systems, with responsibilities spanning from initial concept through in-orbit operation and ongoing design/process improvements.

Responsibilities

  • Develop and own design criteria, requirements, and verification approaches for new satellite systems. Continuously improve these processes with stakeholder engagement.
  • Perform critical peer review of hardware designs during design reviews, and of acceptance and qualification test campaigns, and approve plans based on the strength of technical justification that hardware is ready for launch.
  • Guide engineers through the SpaceX design process and ensure design criteria/requirements are being followed for satellite design, manufacturing, and test activities.
  • Provide development input such as analysis or test recommendations on a wide range of engineering problems encompassing electrical, structural, and radio frequency systems.
  • Leverage involvement in broad spectrum of development efforts to be an expert resource for defining vehicle maturity status in key program reviews and communications.
  • Proactively identify development risks, then implement and track mitigation plans.
  • Develop and own long-term strategy to enable satellite and infrastructure changes, while providing daily engineering support and surge coverage for critical issues.
  • Leverage comprehensive expertise in the satellite system architecture to ensure vehicle-wide and atomic changes improve rather than degrade the satellite.
  • Review analysis and test validation approaches across a range of disciplines including electrical, mechanical, and radio frequency systems to build strong justifications for all changes.
  • Own configuration management for the satellites to ensure bill of materials accuracy for both as-designed and as-built configurations and all changes therein.
  • Provide critical input to ensure change implementation across the fleet of satellite variants is efficient and practical; ensure scope and impacts across design, manufacturing, supply chain, and test are identified and assigned; and follow-up to confirm thorough closure.
  • Serve as the primary expert for tracking and conveying history of all changes and other system-level considerations in key program reviews and investigations.
  • Develop specialized tools that enable design, analysis, and milestone tracking.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline.
  • 1+ years of experience in an engineering role (professional, project team, internship, or extracurricular experience all apply).

Skills

Required:Design criteria developmentPeer review and test planningSystem engineering across electrical/structural/RFConfiguration managementChange management and impact analysis
Nice to have:Vehicle maturity and program reviewsTooling and milestone tracking

Benefits

  • Long-term incentives (stock/stock options or long-term cash awards) and potential discretionary bonuses
  • Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
  • 401(k) retirement plan
  • Short and long-term disability insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Paid parental leave
  • 3 weeks of paid vacation plus 10+ paid holidays per year
  • Paid sick leave (per company policy)
  • Employee discounts and other perks
Last updated Jul 8, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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