Network Automation Engineer (Starshield)

Starshield leverages SpaceX’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. The Starshield team is building highly reliable in-space mesh networks, designing secure systems to guarantee access to space, designing next-gen communication and sensing software, and more

As a Network Automation Engineer you will help create the tooling to expand and monitor the Starshield service provider network. You and your teammates will own the design and implementation of these tools and monitoring strategies all while continually improving existing processes and tools. You will be helping provide visibility into a network that supports critical national security missions and will be challenged to maintain critical systems and services.

• →Deploy, upgrade, operate/maintain, and scale a global networking service to government customers.
• →Closely collaborate with software engineers to create highly operable and maintainable infrastructure
• →Measure, maintain, and improve the uptime and performance of the terrestrial network
• →Act as technical product owner for infrastructure tools and software used in the ground network (Access, Backbone and Edge Networks)
• →Innovate ways to scale with automation and operational improvements
• →Provide mentorship to junior engineers
• →Participate in the on-call rotation 

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, math, or science discipline; OR  2+ years of professional network automation, DevOps, network engineering, or site reliability engineering experience in lieu of a degree
• Experience with networking protocols, their application and traffic types: TCP/IPv4/IPv6, gaming, voice, video, broadcast, streaming
• Experience with Linux operating system
• Automation experience in Python, Shell, Bash, and/or other languages 

• Comfortable working with mission critical and sensitive systems, with a sense of urgency appropriate to the responsibilities
• Understanding of carrier and service provider networks
• Experience with hands-on work in bringing up network infrastructure
• Experience with automatically managing dozens or hundreds of network assets
• Experience with Puppet, Ansible, or other automation frameworks
• Ability to run projects independently
• Excellent communications skills with the ability to communicate with customers, peers, management etc. in both formal and informal situations
• Experience with Prometheus, Grafana and other monitoring tools
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret or Top Secret SCI clearance

• 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, we encourage you to initiate the application process promptly upon accepting this offer. Your ability to secure the necessary clearance is essential for fulfilling key responsibilities of the role. Should you be unable to obtain it, SpaceX reserves the right to modify or terminate your employment to align with operational needs.
• Must be willing to travel domestically and globally in the future when needed
• Must be available for on-call rotations
• Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed

• 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.  

SpaceX is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with SpaceX is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

Applicants wishing to view a copy of SpaceX’s Affirmative Action Plan for veterans and individuals with disabilities, or applicants requiring reasonable accommodation to the application/interview process should reach out to EEOCompliance@spacex.com.