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Automation & Controls Engineer, Launch Hardware Production (Starship)

SpaceX· Starship Launch Hardware Engineering - Cape
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Cape Canaveral, FLfull-timePosted 5d ago

About the role

Automation & Controls Engineer responsible for designing, commissioning, and operating the automation and controls for Starship production facilities, including a 24-lane Gigabay, industrial air separation units, and heat shield tile manufacturing.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and commission the controls for a 24-lane Gigabay: production tooling, lifts, fixtures, factory services, and the data layer the floor uses.
  • Bring industrial air separation units online and keep them running. Own the instrumentation, interlocks, and control narratives for compression, cold box, distillation, storage, and transfer into the propellant farms.
  • Own controls for heat shield tile manufacturing: thermal process equipment, material handling, inspection, and the data that ties process settings to tile quality.
  • Stand up new equipment from first power-on through rate production, then own uptime once it is live.
  • Develop and upgrade data acquisition and control systems as the factory, the air separation plant, and the tile line change.
  • Maintain the operational capability of control-voltage (<60V) electrical systems once activated.
  • Turn sensor and PLC data into something operators and responsible engineers can act on the same shift.
  • Support controls technicians and the mechanical, facilities, and process engineers who depend on these systems.
  • Design hardware and work methods that cut cost, install time, and the time it takes to recover a down line.
  • Analyze data to judge the health of electrical and process systems, and use it to drive the next change.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in physics, electrical engineering, or computer engineering.
  • 6+ months of experience working with data acquisition systems (internship or project experience qualifies).

Skills

Required:Controls design and commissioningIndustrial PLC and networksProcess or factory equipment commissioning
Nice to have:Instrumentation in cryogenic/serviceSensors, valves, drives, analyzers, power distributionElectronics and PCB designData extraction from controllersHigh-reliability build and documentationCommunicationProject execution under pressure
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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