Principal Mechanical Engineer (Starship)
Starbase, TX · 7+ years experience · Onsite · Posted Oct 10, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 7+ years experience
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- Starbase, TX
About the role
- SpaceX is looking for a Principal Mechanical Engineer to help build the infrastructure behind power generation and supercompute at Starbase.
- You will own mechanical scope from concept through design, fabrication, construction, and commissioning.
Responsibilities
- Develop design concepts from a clean sheet and size infrastructure systems based on operational loads, site conditions, and how the facility will actually run
- Collaborate with peers across disciplines to develop designs that balance cost, schedule, reliability, and capability
- Create detailed designs and generate CAD models for components, assemblies, and integration into the larger site
- Build analysis models to assess your designs in detail and confirm they meet the needs of the system
- Apply first-order hand calculations and empirical formulas to assess and iterate on your designs rapidly
- Validate your designs through development hardware, mockups, or first articles, and test critical joints, components, and design elements
- Support testing and commissioning of subsystems and full installations
- Partner with construction, build engineers, and technicians to improve your designs
- Support installation of your hardware in the field, witness your designs being built and brought online, and see them go into service
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline
- 7+ years of experience with mechanical design and analysis
Preferred qualifications
- Experience designing, analyzing, building, and testing high performance, mechanical systems
- Experience working within interdisciplinary teams to develop solutions to challenging and complex problems
- Experience with FEA or multiphysics simulation package (e.g. NASTRAN, ABAQUS, ANSYS)
- Experience designing and executing qualification testing
- Strong understanding of mechanical first principles and structural analysis methodologies
- Proficiency in selecting materials and manufacturing methods for mechanical components
- Analytical/scientific programming experience (i.e. Python, Matlab, Excel)
- Self-motivated with strong organizational, written, and oral communication skills
Skills
- CAD
- FEA
- NASTRAN
- ABAQUS
- ANSYS
- Python
- Matlab
- Excel
