Sr. Supplier Development Engineer (Starlink)

About the role

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Starlink is building the hardware to make a global communications network real: user terminals, gateways, satellites, and datacenter products, at a rate and a cost aerospace has not shipped before.

This is one role because the work is one job. You own a technology, a supplier, and a manufacturing process from selection through high-volume production, and you are accountable for how that hardware performs after it ships. The scope runs across silicon, advanced packaging, printed circuit boards, mechanical parts, and assembly. Some weeks you are choosing the process and the factory. Some weeks you are the reliability engineer or the quality engineer standing up a new design, a new line, or a new process. You do not hand the outcome to someone else.

You will do this with a manufacturing team that has already taken flight hardware and consumer hardware from first article to rate. The problems are on the floor, at the supplier, and in the field.

Responsibilities

• Own hardware from selection to scale for Starlink consumer, gateway, satellite, or datacenter products. Technology choice, supplier choice, process choice, equipment, yield, cost, schedule, and field performance sit with you.
• Select suppliers who can build at the quality and rate the program needs, and develop them until the process is capable. Change the supplier when the technical path is not there.
• Choose the manufacturing process and the equipment. Define the process window, the control plan, and the evidence of capability before rate, not after the line is already late.
• Bring up new designs, new factories, and new processes. Be on the floor, debug the tool, and close the yield and rate gap yourself.
• Do the reliability and quality work the hardware needs: failure analysis, test and screen strategy, process FMEA, corrective action, and a field-to-factory loop that changes the product.
• Carry the technical decision with design, test, supply chain, and the supplier. Make the call and live with the field result.
• Scale what is proven. Stop what will not scale.
• Own escapes into customer deployments, gateway sites, orbit, and datacenter operation.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline.
• 8+ years of hands-on experience in supplier development, manufacturing or process engineering, equipment engineering, quality engineering, or reliability engineering for hardware.
• Experience with driving a supplier, design, or process from initial conception to production.
• Experience owning the outcomes related to final yield, quality, and performance.
• Experience in at least one of the following:
• Semiconductor or packaging
• PCB fabrication or assembly
• Mechanical fabrication
• Electromechanical assembly

Preferred Skills and Experience

• 10+ years, including ownership of a commodity or process from selection through a high-volume ramp.
• Consumer electronics, networking, satellite, or datacenter hardware, with production measured in thousands to millions of units.
• New factory or new process bring-up: equipment selection and installation, process development, capability, and rate.
• Technology and supplier selection on a new design, including process trade studies, make-or-buy, and second source.
• Reliability: life test, HALT/HASS or equivalent, physics of failure, and corrective action tied to field returns.
• Using FMEA, control plans, SPC, DOE, MSA, and structured root cause as engineering tools.
• International supplier travel, and sound judgment when you are the person representing SpaceX in the factory.

Additional Requirements

• Travel up to 50%, including international travel, often on short notice.
• Extended hours during builds, ramps, and line-down events.
• Regular time on factory floors at SpaceX and at suppliers.

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.