Manager, Gateway Electronics Engineering (Starlink)

MANAGER, GATEWAY ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING (STARLNK)

Starlink believes in providing fast, reliable internet to serve populations with little or no connectivity. We design, build, launch, and operate the world's largest constellation of satellites, enabling us to operate a global internet network unbounded by traditional ground infrastructure limitations. Starlink also designs, builds, and delivers high-volume consumer hardware that allows users to connect to these satellites within minutes of unboxing, as well as our advanced gateways that we deploy regionally throughout the world.

The root of SpaceX’s success so far lies in our mission to keep all engineering and production in-house, which enables a tight feedback loop, nimble decision-making, and speedy deliverables. With millions of daily users worldwide already online, Starlink is truly a game changer and levels the playing field for those who were previously unconnected.

As the Electronics Manager on the Starlink team, you will be responsible for the design, performance, and reliability of next-generation gateways - ultimately ensuring that our ground station antenna hardware can withstand the harshest environmental conditions while maintaining reliable communication with millions of users on a global scale. You will interact regularly with senior leadership to influence the fundamental operation of our constellation and network while collaborating with electrical, silicon, software, mechanical, and manufacturing teams to steer this project from initial concept development to full-scale production.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage a team of 5-10 engineers to rapidly design, develop, and validate highly reliable electronics for our gateway systems
• Drive electrical architecture, specification, component selection, circuit board design, implementation, verification, board bring-up, and debugging
• Define and manage all key project milestones and deliverables
• Maintain alignment with key partners such as antenna, software, mechanical, networking, thermal, manufacturing, and production test teams to drive overall business success
• Compile and maintain lessons learned to influence future designs. Understand and implement long-term technical and business solutions that meet/exceed goals to deliver for our customers and Starlink’s vision
• Drive product architecture with a focus on innovative solutions to achieve low cost, greater performance, best user experience, and extended reliability. Implement automated design validation tests and production tests as necessary
• Recruit, develop, and promote a team of exceptional engineers and/or specialists responsible for designing, analyzing, building, and testing existing and new Starlink gateways. Set standards, and hold the team accountable to deliver with high technical rigor and discipline
• Own and build out associated engineering lab or development workspaces; hire necessary team members to deliver assets required, and efficiently manage associated capital spend
• Consistently contribute effort, leadership, and creative thinking to solving complex problems in a collaborative fashion and under tight deadlines. Above all, remain dependable, which means being unfazed by ambiguity or major changes in strategic direction
• Ensure a strong focus is placed on safety and maintain an excellent safety record

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, physics, or other engineering/STEM discipline
• 7+ years of professional experience with hardware design/development or electronics test engineering
• 3+ years of management experience

PREFERRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE:

• Previous experience managing large and multidisciplinary technical projects, ideally driving hardware design from concept through production; strong emphasis on full life-cycle development of new hardware products and not small incremental updates to legacy hardware
• Significant experience rapidly designing and delivering highly-reliable products, especially for harsh or high stakes environments in the field
• Significant experience designing and implementing mixed-signal circuit boards from concept through production using processors, FPGAs, Ethernet, multi-GHz Serdes, DRAM interfaces (DDR4), I2C, SPI, operational amplifiers, analog to digital and digital to analog converters, and power supply components
• Significant experience testing, troubleshooting, and debugging electronics
• Strong problem-solving skills when designing and qualifying hardware for EMC/EMI compliance and thermal management
• Strong understanding of computers and programming languages (Python, C/C++)
• Strong understanding of computer networking and interfaces (10/100/400/800G networking/Tbps switches)
• Strong understanding of optical networking architectures and fundamentals
• Experience in desktop/server Linux and embedded operating systems
• Experience leading a diverse team of engineers, while providing technical direction and strong mentorship
• Ability to communicate complex concepts, problems, and solutions clearly and effectively to all levels within the organization
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent programs and be able to discuss configuration, execution, and results in a technical manner

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Must travel to other SpaceX sites (Hawthorne, CA and Redmond, WA) as needed to interface with team members and drive technical projects
• Ability to work long hours and weekends as necessary

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 (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.