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Principal Software Engineer (Platform Team)

SpaceX· Starship Software Engineering
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Palo Alto, CA$210k - $295kfull-timePosted 5mo ago

About the role

Principal Software Engineer for SpaceX's AI platform; leads technical vision and architecture for AI platform and security infrastructure, building secure, scalable gateways and proxy systems to enable AI across SpaceX with risk-mitigation tooling and enterprise-grade automation.

Responsibilities

  • Define and drive the long-term technical vision and architecture for SpaceX’s AI platform and security infrastructure
  • Lead high-impact initiatives with full ownership over strategy, design, implementation, and successful company-wide rollout
  • Oversee onboarding of frontier models, massive compute scaling, and continuous optimization of proxy systems for security, efficiency, logging, and control
  • Lead adoption efforts at scale — establishing standards, mentoring senior engineers, building reusable assets, and driving cultural change toward AI-first workflows
  • Proactively identify and execute on the highest-leverage opportunities to turn ideas into production software, trained models, and automated systems with managed, reliable compute
  • Invent and scale advanced risk-mitigation capabilities (AI code review, automated PR tools, safety systems) that protect and accelerate the business
  • Establish best practices and technical direction for lean, secure, and maximally effective applied AI across the company
  • Serve as a key technical advisor and collaborator with leadership and cross-functional teams to align platform capabilities with SpaceX’s most ambitious goals

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or other engineering discipline and 7+ years of professional experience building and scaling production platforms; OR 9+ years of professional experience building and scaling production platforms in lieu of a degree
  • Experience designing and operating large-scale AI/ML platforms, internal developer platforms, or mission-critical infrastructure

Skills

Required:Bachelor's degree qualificationLarge-scale AI/ML platform designDocker/KubernetesSecurity and zero-trust models
Nice to have:MLOps and model lifecycle

Benefits

  • comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
  • 401(k) retirement plan
  • short and long-term disability insurance
  • life insurance
  • paid parental leave
  • discounts and perks
  • 3 weeks of paid vacation and 10+ paid holidays per year
  • paid sick leave policy as per company guidelines
  • stock or long-term cash incentives and Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Last updated Jul 8, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About SpaceX

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