Sr. Electrical Hardware Engineer, AI Satellites; Starmind

Position: Sr. Electrical Hardware Engineer, AI Satellites (Starmind)
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. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.

SR. ELECTRICAL HARDWARE ENGINEER, AI SATELLITES (STARMIND)
SpaceX is leveraging its experience deploying and operating the world’s largest satellite constellation to develop Starmind, a new constellation of satellites capturing solar energy in space to power low-cost, high-performance AI compute for Earth. Realizing this vision demands highly reliable, high performance electrical hardware ranging from power electronics, high speed digital systems, mixed signal designs, robust avionics, networking, and custom compute electronics.

These systems must operate in the extreme environment of space while delivering the connectivity, control, power distribution, and processing needed for orbital AI inference.

The Starmind team designs, builds, and operates the orbital compute fabric of the future. We develop nearly every key piece of technology in house – from the satellites’ flight computers and power systems to the fully custom compute electronics, memory, and networking that form the brain of our on-orbit data centers. As a Senior Electrical Design Engineer on the Starmind Payload Engineering team, you’ll have ownership over the entire life-cycle of the hardware that enables advanced on-orbit AI processing and data center workloads.

Your work sits at the intersection of electrical, mechanical, thermal, and software engineering. The Payload team is responsible for the design of industry-leading compute electronics, memory, and networking in order to achieve required domain sizes and processing workloads.

RESPONSIBILITIES Rapidly develop high-reliability electronics for satellites and spacecraft.

Drive system trades, requirements capture, component selection, analysis, schematic capture, PCB layout, prototyping, hardware bring-up, debugging, documentation, manufacturing, test, and on-orbit performance of complex electrical designs

Get hands-on and support hardware through production, satellite integration, and flight

Determine layer stackup, perform component package selection, component placement, routing feasibility studies, and signal routing of digital, analog, RF, and power conversion of PCBsLibrary creation and maintenance

Create and release documentation for fabrication of PCBsCollaborate with internal teams and PCB vendors to continually improve design rules, constraints and design for test and manufacture guidelines

Work closely with engineers from adjacent disciplines (mechanical, thermal, software, test engineering, supply chain, silicon design, etc.) to deliver tightly integrated, high-performance hardware

Challenge assumptions, question requirements, learn from your mistakes, and approach problems with an open mindBASIC QUALIFICATIONS Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or physics5+ years of industry experience designing circuits, electronic products, or hardware PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE Master’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or similar engineering degree2+ years of professional experience rapidly designing and delivering highly reliable products2+ years of electronic product experience designing hardware from concept through production;

strong emphasis on full life-cycle development of new hardware products and not small incremental updates to legacy hardware2+ years of experience designing and implementing mixed-signal circuit boards from concept through production using processors, FPGAs, Ethernet, multi-GHz Serdes, DRAM interfaces (DDR4), I2C,…