Sr. Hardware Reliability Engineer; Starshield

Sr. Hardware Reliability Engineer (Starshield)

Hawthorne, CA

Space

X 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 Space

X is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.

Starshield leverages Space

X’s Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts. While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads.

As a Sr. Hardware Reliability Engineer for Starshield, you will play a crucial role in ensuring the reliability and performance of our satellites. You will work on identifying, analyzing, and resolving hardware failures to improve the robustness and longevity of our PCBAs. This role involves collaborating with cross‑functional teams, including electrical, mechanical, software, and supply chain, to enhance the overall reliability of the Starshield hardware.

This is an opportunity to work on cutting‑edge R&D technology and some of the most complex applications of electrical engineering in the industry.

• Responsible for troubleshooting, root cause, failure investigations, and corrective actions for Starshield production non‑conforming hardware
• Utilize design schematics, test equipment, and inspection processes to identify the physics of the failure
• Take extreme ownership in containing suspect or known non‑conforming products, driving root cause investigation progress and providing regular updates to technicians, production leadership, and engineering to assist in quarantine and rework activities
• Drive corrective action to products not meeting design specifications through data‑driven decisions using yield and defect monitoring to identify common failure modes
• Work closely with the respective test engineers for your products to keep a close feedback loop improving test assets to reduce false failures and increase test coverage
• Maximize return on investment for test and inspection processes, determining where to apply lean process checks which ensure that criteria are objective and that reliability goals are consistently met
• Identify areas for electrical design and manufacturing improvements through new product development cycles, improving final yield by applying best practices to designs and establishing repeatable process control
• Maintain thorough documentation of failure analysis findings, test results, and corrective actions
• Collaborate with on‑orbit reliability team, driving timely improvements to production through on‑orbit investigation findings
• Provide mentorship and guidance to more junior engineers on the team
• Serve as technical expert in electronics manufacturing processes to challenge requirements and steer the department towards value added testing

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, physics, or other engineering discipline
• 5+ years in hardware development, failure analysis, or reliability engineering
• 2+ years of experience with electrical test equipment (e.g., multimeters, signal generators, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers) used to verify hardware functionality

• Master’s degree in electrical engineering or equivalent engineering discipline
• 8+ years of industry experience working with electronic hardware
• Experience with digital and mixed‑signal designs, power electronics, or RF electronics using oscilloscopes, digital multimeters, power supplies, and soldering equipment
• Demonstrated experience troubleshooting and root causing electrical hardware failures
• PCBA fabrication experience (familiar with solder, flux, underfill, staking, reflow, temperature control, etc.)
• Experience with environmental testing such as HALT/HASS, thermal, vibration, and TVAC
• Experience with RF test equipment (e.g. vector network analyzer, spectrum analyzer) and concepts such as S‑parameters, impedance matching, and antenna designs
• Proficiency in programming languages (e.g. Python, SQL, C, C++)
• Knowledgeable of…