Sr. Site Reliability Engineer (Application Software)

About the role

The application software team is the central nervous system of SpaceX. We build mission-critical platforms that accelerate vehicle software delivery, testing, and operations for every Falcon 9, Starship, and Dragon mission all while powering Starlink's global growth.

This position will have a meaningful impact on Starship by significantly reducing safety-critical build and test times for vehicle software. We are looking for a Site Reliability Engineer who brings a strong SRE mindset, cares deeply about safety, quality, and attention to detail, and possesses the ability to understand the big picture before writing code. The ideal candidate fully understands what they are building, enjoys hard problem solving, thinks strategically, and is decisive, organized, and self-critical.

SpaceX relies on our vehicle software being built quickly and correctly, tested rigorously, and rapidly iterated on. You will build and maintain the tools that make this possible. Every time a Falcon 9 or Starship launches, a Dragon capsule docks with the ISS, or a Starlink satellite connects a new community, the software responsible for it was created with the tools you design, improve, and scale.

Aerospace experience is not required. We value smart, motivated, collaborative engineers who treat teammates with fairness, respect, and support, and who want to take full ownership of challenging problems to help make humanity multi-planetary.

Responsibilities

• Deploy, upgrade, operate, maintain, and scale our suite of mission-critical products and services
• Manage our underlying infrastructure as code and use modern observability tools to provide a complete picture of application health
• Closely collaborate with software engineers to design and build highly operable, maintainable, and testable systems
• Engage in and improve the entire software development lifecycle - from inception and design through deployment, operation, and continuous refinement
• Practice sustainable incident response and blameless postmortems
• Provide high-quality end-user support to vehicle software engineers
• Participate in the team's on-call rotation
• Identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks using measurement and creative engineering

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or an engineering discipline; OR 7+ years of professional experience in SRE or DevOps in lieu of a degree
• 3+ years of experience with Python and Python-based development frameworks
• Experience with Linux operating systems

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience with build systems (Bazel, Buck, Make, etc.)
• Experience with both container and virtualization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, vSphere, QEMU, KVM, etc.)
• Experience with databases and data modeling (Postgres, MySQL, ClickHouse, etc.)
• Experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools for managing fleets of servers
• Experience with Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, or similar automation frameworks
• Knowledge of the technologies that predate and underpin modern cloud infrastructure, with the ability to translate high-level developer experiences into specific implementations from first principles
• Ability to work with mission-critical and sensitive systems with appropriate urgency and care
• Ability to communicate effectively with customers, peers, and management in both formal and informal settings
• Experience with full-stack development (the team primarily uses Python, JavaScript, and C#; end users primarily use C++)

Additional Requirements

• Must be able to work extended hours and weekends as needed

Pay Range

Sr. Site Reliability Engineer: $165,000.00 - $230,000.00/per year

Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package at SpaceX. You may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of company stock, stock options, or long-term cash awards, as well as potential discretionary bonuses and the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan.

You will also receive access to comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation & will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year.

Employees accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law.

Itar Requirements

• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.