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Sr. Site Reliability Engineer - Top Secret Clearance (Starlink)

Join SpaceX as a Sr. Site Reliability Engineer to enhance the Starlink program and provide life-changing broadband access globally.

Location
Redmond, WA
Compensation
$165k–$230k/yr
Level
senior
Type
full time

Posted by employer 1 month ago

First seen on Joblaze 1 month ago

Last verified on the company career page 1 day ago

Requirements

Experience
5+ years
Education
Bachelor's degree

Not disclosed in this posting: work arrangement, visa sponsorship.

Benefits

401k Match Paid Vacation Paid Sick Leave Equity/Stock Options Paid Holidays Health Insurance Parental Leave

Joblaze summary

In the role of Sr. Site Reliability Engineer for the Starlink program at SpaceX, the engineer will tackle complex challenges to enhance the performance and reliability of the satellite internet system. Key skills include expertise in Linux, experience with Kubernetes, and proficiency in programming languages such as Python or Go, alongside a strong background in site reliability or DevOps. This position is ideal for seasoned engineers who thrive in collaborative environments and are eager to contribute to a mission that aims to revolutionize global internet access.

Joblaze insights

  • Listed about a month ago — first seen on Joblaze August 14, 2026. Last confirmed on SpaceX's careers page October 7, 2026.
  • This exact title is also open at 1 other location at SpaceX: Hawthorne, CA.
  • Salary band is in line with the typical range for DevOps/SRE roles (median ~$165,000).
  • Starts above 40% of 83 comparable senior devops/sre roles in United States that list Kubernetes we track (median $165,000 across 39 companies). See Kubernetes salary trends
  • Kubernetes appears in 67.7% of 186 comparable senior devops/sre roles in United States; Scala appears in 2.2% of 186 comparable senior devops/sre roles in United States.

Quick facts

What's the salary range?
SpaceX lists $165,000–$230,000 for this role.
How much experience is required?
At least 5 years of relevant experience for this Sr. Site Reliability Engineer - Top Secret Clearance (Starlink) role.
What's the tech stack?
Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Apache Kafka, C++, Flink, Go, HBase, HDFS.
What seniority level is this role?
SpaceX targets senior candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?
Full-time for this Sr. Site Reliability Engineer - Top Secret Clearance (Starlink) role at SpaceX.

From the original posting

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. SITE RELIABILITY ENGINEER - TOP SECRET CLEARANCE (STARLINK)

At SpaceX we’re leveraging our experience in building rockets and spacecraft to deploy Starlink, the world’s most advanced broadband internet system. Starlink is the world’s largest satellite constellation and is providing fast, reliable internet to 9M+ users worldwide. We design, build, test, and operate all parts of the system – thousands of satellites, consumer receivers that allow users to connect within minutes of unboxing, and the software that brings it all together. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of Starlink’s potential global impact and are looking for the world’s best engineers to help maximize Starlink’s utility for communities and businesses around the globe.

As a Sr. Site Reliability Engineer on the Starlink program, you will be solving challenges that improve our ability to fully utilize the hardware we have deployed. Our goal is to provide customers with the best possible satellite internet experience, often providing under-served communities with affordable, life-changing broadband internet access.

Aerospace experience is not required for success here - rather, we look for smart, motivated, and collaborative site reliability engineers who love solving problems and want to make an impact on a truly inspiring mission. You will have full ownership of challenging problems, working with a team of enthusiastic engineers to design and produce solutions that enable SpaceX to move towards our goals at a rapid pace. The success of the missions at SpaceX depends on the software that you and your team produce.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Upgrade existing distributed systems to become sharded and geo-redundant in multiple data centers
  • Advance existing deployment, monitoring, and alerting infrastructure to support a multi-region environment
  • Manage petabyte scale bare metal compute clusters
  • Closely collaborate with engineers across all programs to create highly operable, scalable, and maintainable products
  • Engage throughout the whole software development lifecycle of services -- from inception to design, deployment, operation, and iterative refinement
  • Focus on performance bottlenecks and performance improvement techniques

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, math, or scientific discipline and 5 years of software development experience; OR 7+ years of professional experience building software with site reliability or DevOps in lieu of a degree
  • Experience with Linux operating systems
  • Active Top-Secret or Top-Secret SCI

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

  • 5+ years of rigorous experience with site reliability or DevOps
  • Experience with Kubernetes and Istio for on-premise deployment
  • Experience with in-stream, data processing and analytics using open source platforms such as Apache Kafka, Spark, HBase, HDFS, Flink
  • Experience troubleshooting hardware and network-layer issues
  • Programming experience in Python, C#, Java, Scala, Go or similar languages
  • Good understanding of version control, testing, continuous integration, build, deployment and monitoring

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

  • Willing to work extended hours and weekends when needed
  • Active Top Secret or TS/SCI. Note that an active clearance may provide the opportunity for you to work on sensitive SpaceX missions. If so, you will be subject to pre-employment drug and random drug and alcohol testing

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

Pay Range:
Level 3: $165,000.00 - $230,000.00

ITAR REQUIREMENTS:

Standard company text repeated across SpaceX's postings is omitted here.

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