Government Project Engineer
$100,000–$117,500 year
On-siteHawthorne, California, United States
Job Summary
Lead technical subject areas for government missions, managing 30+ subject matter experts across NASA LSP, NASA Crew, and NSSL organizations. Prepare and manage project schedules while maintaining a systems-level understanding of Falcon vehicles to ensure 100% mission success. Create technical arguments, negotiate customer requirements, and coordinate mitigation plans for vehicle changes and risks. Represent SpaceX in customer meetings, travel to launch sites, and perform specialized analysis for verification activities and joint testing. Develop applications to document interactions and track approval workflows. This role supports the Government Project Engineering team's goal of enabling increased launch rates and customer flexibility for critical crew and payload missions.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline
- 1+ years of hardware experience performing engineering, fabrication, assembly, or testing
- Must be available to work long hours and weekends as necessary
- Must be available to travel as necessary
- Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. lawful permanent resident, Refugee, or Asylee (or eligible for required authorizations)
- Lead one or more technical subject areas, managing 30+ subject matter experts across 3 different customer organizations
- Prepare and manage project schedules in collaboration with customers and internal SpaceX teams
- Maintain a systems-level understanding of the vehicle, with the ability to deep dive into specific technical topics
- Create and present clear and concise technical arguments to both external and internal teams
- Negotiate, review, and ensure implementation of all customer maintenance, launch vehicle, and re-use requirements
- Represent SpaceX in various customer-led meetings and forums
- Manage vehicle changes for upcoming government, including notifying customers of any modifications
- Track SpaceX and customer risks while developing and coordination mitigation plans in partnership with the customers
- Travel to launch and test sites to support customer visits, tours, or engagements
- Ensure launch vehicle readiness for government missions, coordinating across teams as needed
- Analyze government and commercial customer requirements to determine compatibility with SpaceX products
- Perform specialized analysis in support of verification activities; lead or participate in tests and demonstrations in support of requirement verification, including joint testing with customers
- Interact with customers to describe designs and their function, answer high-level customer technical questions, without a responsible engineer present
- Develop systems and applications to document SpaceX/customer interactions and feedback, and track customer approval workflow
Desired Qualifications
- Master's degree in an engineering discipline
- Excellent communication skills and desire to attain highest levels of customer satisfaction
- Highly detail oriented, diligent, hard-working
- Strong interpersonal and collaborative skills, with enthusiasm for problem solving and a great attitude in the face of extreme challenges
- Excellent negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills
- Experience in technical project management and master scheduling
- Experience in owning and effectively resolving root-cause investigations, including effective resolution and hardware containment actions
- 2+ years of experience with any of the following: requirements development, engineering design, hardware production, verification plan development, test and evaluation, NASA or USSF certification of spacecraft and launch vehicles, design engineering, mission management, production and test, launch and mission operations, flight test, systems integration and engineering, project management
- Hands-on experience with various industry standard manufacturing tools (mills, lathes, electronics assembly, composite layups, ect.) and design or analysis packages (NASTRAN, ABAQUS, ANSYS, CAD, ect.)
- Hardware or project leadership on an award-winning engineering project or competition team (FSAE, Design-Build-Fly, NASA Student Launch, etc.)
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