Electrical Engineer

About the role

The Starship Avionics team builds the high-performance electronics that fly on the most powerful launch vehicle in history. As an Electrical Engineer you will take hardware from concept to flight, owning the full lifecycle: requirements, component selection, schematic capture, prototyping, testing, and the qualification campaigns that prove a design is ready for the mission. Your hardware must survive the booster, the ship, integration, and operations, and the electronics have to deliver even when the vehicle pushes them to their limits, which is precisely the point of the qualification campaign you will design and run. The team balances two forces at once: hardware that must be extremely reliable, and production cycles that keep pace with the fast cadence of a reusable program, with no time to perfect but no room for error. You will work across departments to keep reliability and manufacturability in lockstep, and the hardware you design will fly into orbit and back. Avionics at this scale is about margin: every component has a story, every circuit a load case, and the design has to hold in vacuums, vibration, and thermal extremes that are not forgiving. Engineers who enjoy the details, the trade studies, and the honest test data are the ones who fit this team best.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Manage the full hardware lifecycle: requirements, component selection, schematic capture, prototyping, and testing.
• Design and execute rigorous qualification campaigns that push hardware performance to its limits.
• Carry hardware through manufacturing, integration, and flight operations.
• Collaborate across departments to improve system reliability and manufacturability.
• Be the engineering owner who sees the design through to volume build, not just to a board.
• Troubleshoot on the bench and on the vehicle, and translate findings into the next design revision before the next unit is built.
• Take an active part in design reviews, offering a clear viewpoint on what should ship and what should stay at the bench.
• Keep documentation complete enough that the next engineer can pick up the design cold.

Requirements

• Bachelor degree in electrical engineering.
• Minimum 1 year of experience in electronics design, construction, or testing, including academic projects or internships.
• Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee to meet ITAR export regulations.

Nice to have

• Experience with circuit board layout for high-speed digital or switching power applications.
• Proficiency in designing power magnetics, analog control loops, motor inverters, or sensor signal conditioning.
• Familiarity with high voltage systems, lithium ion batteries, or power distribution.
• Background in high-performance digital processors, FPGAs, memory, or network switches.
• Skills in automating hardware tasks via scripting for benchtop equipment control.
• Experience creating new hardware designs rather than modifying legacy systems.

Skills & tools

• Schematic capture and PCB design
• Power electronics and signal conditioning
• EMI/EMC compliance
• Hardware testing and debugging
• Scripting for test automation

Practical notes

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Compensation: Level I pays $105,000 to $122,500 annually; Level II pays $120,000 to $150,000 annually.

• Benefits include medical, dental, vision, a 401(k), life insurance, disability, and paid parental leave.
• Includes 3 weeks of paid vacation, 10+ paid holidays, and accrued sick leave.
• Expect extended hours and weekend work during critical mission milestones.
• The avionics team operates on a fast development cycle; engineers who take ownership of a problem keep the vehicle moving when the schedule tightens.
• The hardware this team builds flies on Starship: the vehicle is not a side project here, it is the whole reason the team exists.

About the company

Based in Starbase, Texas, a company pursues work in spaceflight, telecom, and artificial intelligence. A unit handles rocket launches, leading yearly orbital counts beyond other national and commercial teams. Another unit runs Starlink, a satellite communications firm. A third area, through SpaceXAI, advances Grok and AI integration with X, while managing data center operations. Roles often cross these paths. Candidates with engineering, software, or operations backgrounds may find chances to join projects that span launch, connectivity, and machine learning efforts in this Texas-based enterprise.