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Chemical Texturing Equipment Engineer, Solar Cells (Starlink)

SpaceX· AI Satellite Solar Engineering
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Bastrop, TXfull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Chemical Texturing Equipment Engineer owning and maintaining wet chemical texturing and preclean equipment for silicon heterojunction solar cell manufacturing at scale, focusing on equipment reliability, uptime, and scaling to support Starlink production.

Responsibilities

  • Work with facilities and process engineering teams to install, qualify, maintain, and continuously improve high-throughput texturing and preclean equipment for heterojunction silicon solar cell manufacturing
  • Drive equipment reliability and uptime to support very large volume production with minimal downtime. Run experiments and analyze data to improve capacity (UPH), reduce tool-to-tool variation, and improve defect performance
  • Develop and execute robust preventive and predictive maintenance strategies, spare parts programs, and tool matching protocols for high-volume manufacturing
  • Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions on all equipment-related issues, including chemical delivery systems, pumps, filtration, temperature control, robotics/automation, wet benches, and exhaust/abatement systems
  • Partner closely with Process Engineers to implement new process requirements on existing and future equipment platforms
  • Evaluate and select next-generation high-throughput texturing tools capable of supporting 1GW+ per tool scale production
  • Work with vendors on equipment design improvements, upgrades, and custom solutions tailored to heterojunction solar cell requirements
  • Establish equipment performance metrics (OEE, MTBF, MTTR) and implement statistical process control for hardware stability
  • Ensure all equipment meets cleanroom, safety, and high-reliability manufacturing standards
  • Analyze production processes and machinery from a first principles, physics-based approach
  • Attend meetings to communicate factory state to leadership with respect to the team’s equipment

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, or related technical discipline
  • 2+ years of hands-on experience owning and maintaining chemical process equipment in a high-volume semiconductor, solar manufacturing, or related environment
  • Experience handling flammable, toxic, corrosive, and/or hazardous chemicals and gases safely

Skills

Required:Chemical delivery systemsWet process equipmentPumps
Nice to have:Robotics/automationReliability engineeringStatistical toolsTexturing tool architecture

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, vision benefits
  • Retirement/401(k) with company match
  • Paid time off and holidays
  • Relocation assistance may be provided
  • Employee stock options may be offered
Last updated Jul 29, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About SpaceX

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