Software Engineer, Platform / Infrastructure (Starlink)

<div class="content-intro"><p>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&nbsp;enabling human life on Mars.</p></div><p><strong>SOFTWARE ENGINEER, PLATFORM AND INFRASTRUCTURE (STARLINK)<br></strong><br>As a Software Engineer on the Core Infrastructure team, you will sit at the intersection of Site Reliability Engineering, Platform Engineering, and Database Reliability.</p> <p>Beyond keeping systems running and responding to tickets, you will take on the role of an architectural investigator. Your mission is to anticipate the next bottleneck before it happens and help build the solution that prevents it.</p> <p>Modern distributed infrastructure generates thousands of signals, alerts, and metrics every minute, and so do stakeholders. We need an engineer who can cut through the noise on both fronts.</p> <p>Technically, you will identify the underlying causal problems behind alerts and implement automated, systemic fixes. Organizationally, you will approach feature tickets and infrastructure requests as investigations to uncover the true underlying need. You will work with stakeholders to find the best solution rather than simply implementing the first one proposed.</p> <p>You will help build the internal developer platform that empowers our product teams to ship code securely and rapidly, while ensuring our persistence layer and infrastructure scale reliably under heavy load.</p> <p>If you treat infrastructure as a software engineering problem and see reducing operational toil as a core engineering goal, this role is for you.</p> <p><strong>RESPONSIBILITIES:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks by analyzing system metrics, database queries, and cloud resource usage before they impact users.</li> <li>Build and maintain the internal developer platform, including the self-service tools and CI/CD pipelines.</li> <li>Operate and secure the production Kubernetes clusters that run our customer-facing website, managed as code.</li> <li>Partner with application teams to optimize slow SQL queries and manage database schema changes safely.</li> <li>Investigate infrastructure requests to understand the real underlying need and propose better long-term solutions.</li> </ul> <p><strong>BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a STEM discipline.</li> <li>1+ years of professional experience with networking or infrastructure projects.</li> <li>1+ years of professional experience programming in Python, Go, or a similar language used in infrastructure and platform work.</li> <li>Strong attention to detail.</li> </ul> <p><strong>PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Experience with Kubernetes in multi-region or large-scale environments.</li> <li>Experience with CI and DevOps pipelines, deployment tools, or related infrastructure projects (e.g., Jenkins, Bamboo, ArgoCD, Argo Workflows, Helm).</li> <li>Experience with observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ClickHouse, OpenTelemetry) and an understanding of what makes an alert accurate and actionable.</li> <li>Familiarity with relational databases (g., PostgreSQL), including indexing and query performance, especially in distributed or multi-region deployments.</li> <li>Contributions to open-source projects or development of open-source tools.</li> </ul> <p><strong>ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed.</li> </ul> <p><strong>COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:</strong></p> <p>Pay range:<br>Level I: $135,000.00 - $155,000.00/per year<br>Level II: $155,000.00 - $185,000.00/per year</p> <p>Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-r