Site Reliability Engineer, AI Infrastructure (Starshield) Verified today
About the role
SpaceX is deploying Starshield, the world's largest US government satellite constellation providing critical intelligence and national security data to the US government globally. You will design, operate and scale the infrastructure supporting these missions, working across Site Reliability Engineering, Developer Operations, and GPU platforms.
What you will do
- Manage GPU/CPU infrastructure deployments to Top Secret datacenters
- Manage and provide support for GPU as a service for external customers on bare metal hardware and virtualized platforms
- Design, validate, and productize solutions for AI clusters at 100k+ GPU scale
- Develop automation to deploy and manage on-premise Kubernetes and AI clusters, and operating systems
- Deploy and manage core infrastructure such as databases, monitoring and distributed storage
- Collaborate closely with AI engineers to create highly scalable, operable, and maintainable products
- Engage in the full lifecycle of services from inception and design through deployment, operation and refinement
- Implement monitoring and alerting to achieve high system availability
- Identify improvements and create innovative solutions enabling high system availability
Basic qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems/IT, or engineering discipline plus 1+ years of professional site reliability engineering or DevOps experience; OR 3+ years of professional site reliability engineering or DevOps experience in lieu of a degree
- 1+ years of professional experience with Linux operating systems
- Experience with Terraform, Ansible, or other infrastructure tools
- Experience with containerization technologies (OCI containers, Kubernetes)
- Scripting experience in Bash, Python, or similar languages
- Development experience in Python, C++, or Go
Preferred qualifications
- 1+ years of professional Python and Python-based development framework experience
- Experience managing Kubernetes clusters, not just using them
- Knowledge of Linux boot process and systems configuration
- Deep understanding of testing, continuous integration, build, deployment and continuous monitoring
- Understanding of relevant build technologies such as Bazel and Makefiles
- Focus on performance bottlenecks and performance improvement techniques
- Understanding of distributed databases and data modeling
- Experience automatically managing thousands of servers using Terraform or Ansible
- Strong networking knowledge of TCP/IP
- Cloud virtualization experience as the cloud provider
- Experience using NVIDIA GPU deployment stacks (Blackwell/Rubin)
- Excellent communications skills with customers, peers, and management in formal and informal situations
- Active Top Secret, Top Secret SCI, or DOE Level Q clearance
Additional requirements
- Willingness to work extended hours and weekends as needed
- Willingness to travel domestically and globally when needed
- This position requires successfully obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret Security Clearance as a condition of employment. While the clearance may not be immediately necessary upon hire, you are encouraged to initiate the application process upon accepting this offer. Your ability to secure the necessary clearance is essential for fulfilling key responsibilities. Should you be unable to obtain it, SpaceX reserves the right to modify or terminate employment to align with operational needs.
Compensation
- Level 1: $125,000 - $165,000 annually
- Level 2: $145,000 - $200,000 annually
- Actual level and salary determined on a case-by-case basis based on job-related knowledge, skills, education, and experience
- Those with an active clearance receive a 10% differential, up to an additional $20,000 annually, once officially briefed into a classified program
Base salary is one part of your total rewards package. You may be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of company stock or long-term cash awards, discretionary bonuses, and the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You will receive comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and paid parental leave. You will accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation and be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Employees in Washington State accrue paid sick time in compliance with state and federal law. Company shuttles are offered for roundtrip travel from select Seattle locations to the SpaceX Redmond office Monday to Friday.
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 (green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. Section 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. Section 1158, or be eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.