Full-Time

Senior Security Software Engineer

Starshield

Posted on 8/22/2026

SpaceX

SpaceX

10,001+ employees

Designs, manufactures, and launches rockets

Compensation Overview

$170k - $265k/yr

+ Long-term incentives + Long-term cash awards + Discretionary bonuses + Employee Stock Purchase Plan

No H1B Sponsorship

Washington, DC, USA

In Person

US Citizenship, US Top Secret Clearance Required

Bachelor's

Category
Software Engineering (1)
Required Skills
TCP/IP
Python
Incident Response
Distributed Systems
Computer Networking
Operating Systems
Vulnerability Analysis
Go
C/C++

Get referred to SpaceX

See people who can refer or advise you

Requirements
  • A bachelor's degree in computer science or another STEM discipline and at least five years of professional experience in security software development, or at least seven years of professional experience in security software development in lieu of a degree.
  • Experience with one or more software development languages, such as Python, C++, or Golang.
  • Experience designing and implementing security solutions for operating systems, distributed systems, or other enterprise or large-scale infrastructure.
  • Knowledge of the security design of the modern Internet, including its cryptographic primitives.
  • Willingness to work extended hours and weekends as needed.
  • Must successfully obtain and maintain a Top Secret security clearance as a condition of employment.
  • Must satisfy United States Government export-control requirements through qualifying citizenship, permanent residency, refugee or asylee status, or eligibility to obtain the required authorizations.
Responsibilities
  • Design and build security infrastructure for Starshield, including cryptographic services and other security-critical services.
  • Develop security features for Starshield systems, including routers, dishes, gateways, and satellites.
  • Design security into factory processes and provide network services in support of those processes.
  • Maintain existing production systems and improve their security posture through direct implementation and recommendations to other teams.
  • Build prototypes and help identify, design, and test security improvements.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience contributing security improvements to complex systems.
  • Experience working with special-purpose security hardware, including trusted platform modules and hardware security modules.
  • Fundamental understanding of network protocols, including the TCP/IP stack and UDP-based protocols.
  • Experience navigating large, complex, interactive systems.
  • Flexibility, clear communication, and productive working relationships with other engineering teams.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
  • Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a team.
  • Ability to deal with ambiguity and learn new technologies quickly.
  • An advanced degree in a technical or engineering discipline.
  • An active Top Secret, Top Secret SCI, or DOE Level Q clearance.

SpaceX designs, builds, and launches rockets and spacecraft for government and commercial customers, using reusable first stages to cut costs. Its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy recover their boosters to enable rapid reuse, while Dragon transports cargo and crew to the International Space Station. Starlink operates a satellite internet constellation to provide global broadband coverage. It earns revenue from launches and merchandise, with the broader goal of making space travel cheaper and, over time, enabling human life on other planets and expanding global internet access.

Company Size

10,001+

Company Stage

IPO

Headquarters

Starbase, Texas

Founded

2002

Get referred to SpaceX

See people who can refer or advise you

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Texas backed SpaceX Terafab on August 6, 2026 with $30 million and 3,000 jobs.
  • Flight 14 targets Starship's first orbital mission and tower catch this month.
  • Docomo's 2026 Starlink rollout reached 6.5 million users across Japan.

What critics are saying

  • FAA grounding after July 16 engine abort delays Starship and Starlink V3 deployment.
  • SpaceX faces California harassment litigation; Dopak's trial is scheduled for April 20, 2027.
  • If Starship slips past 2028, Starlink V3 deployment and reusable economics collapse.

What makes SpaceX unique

  • Falcon 9 flew 90 missions by August 4, 2026, unmatched Western launch cadence.
  • Starlink has 10,882 working satellites, and Docomo extends distribution into Japan.
  • Terafab links chips, Starbase launches, and Bastrop hardware inside Texas manufacturing control.

Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?

Benefits

Benefits and Perks - Our employees’ well-being is important to us and essential to our capacity to do extraordinary things. We offer a wide variety of programs to support the health, wellness, and financial security of our employees and their families.

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-1%

1 year growth

-2%

2 year growth

-2%
Yahoo Finance
Aug 19th, 2026
Amazon adds Grok 4.6 to Bedrock in enterprise AI push

Amazon has added SpaceXAI's Grok 4.6 model to its Bedrock platform, expanding options for enterprise AI customers. The model is now available to developers in supported AWS regions. Amazon Bedrock allows customers to access and deploy third-party AI models without building underlying infrastructure. The addition gives AWS users another choice alongside existing models on the platform. For SpaceXAI, the integration provides broader distribution, offering an opportunity to reach enterprise developers and convert model improvements into commercial usage beyond consumer attention. The move strengthens Bedrock's competitive position against Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud in the race for AI workloads.

Yahoo Finance
Aug 19th, 2026
Eli Lilly could surpass SpaceX's $1.8T valuation by 2026 amid profitability concerns

Eli Lilly, valued at over $1.1 trillion, could potentially surpass SpaceX's $1.8 trillion valuation by late 2026, though significant market shifts would be required. The pharmaceutical giant has risen 25% in six months and hit new highs Wednesday, trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 34. Revenue grew 48% in its most recent quarter. SpaceX, publicly traded for only two months, has shown high volatility and remains deeply unprofitable with accelerating cash burn. The stock recently bounced from lows around $104 amid lockup expiration concerns. For Eli Lilly to overtake SpaceX, it would need to rise over 60%, or SpaceX would need to fall approximately 40% to around $84 per share. A combination of smaller movements in both directions could also close the gap between the two companies' valuations.

Yahoo Finance
Aug 19th, 2026
Harvard reveals $2.2B SpaceX stake, its largest public equity holding

Harvard Management Co. has disclosed a $2.2 billion stake in SpaceX, making it the university's largest public equity holding. Harvard held 12.94 million shares of SpaceX Class A common stock as of 30 June, according to a regulatory filing. The position exceeds Harvard's stakes in Amazon, Taiwan Semiconductor, Cerebras Systems, and Nvidia. It accounts for more than half of Harvard's $4.3 billion in total US equities disclosed in the filing. SpaceX went public on Nasdaq on 12 June and experienced significant volatility, falling over 50% from its peak of around $225 before rebounding. The company reported second-quarter revenue of $7.81 billion, up 92% year-over-year. Other major investors include Nvidia with a $21 billion stake and Alphabet with $94.1 billion.

Tech in Asia
Aug 19th, 2026
Cursor launches Origin code hosting as GitHub logs 257 outages in one year

Cursor, the AI coding startup owned by SpaceX, has launched Origin, a code repository and pull request management tool integrated into its platform. The service, now in early beta for paid users, allows developers to host repositories natively or alongside GitHub projects. The launch coincided with a GitHub outage exceeding six hours. According to LeadDev analysis, GitHub experienced 257 incidents between May 2025 and April 2026, with 48 classified as major disruptions. For repositories originating on GitHub, the platform remains the source of truth, whilst discussions synchronise bidirectionally. Despite reliability concerns, GitHub maintains dominance in code hosting, with 180 million developers using the service as of October 2025.

Realty Wire
Aug 18th, 2026
Ex-SpaceX engineer's startup aims to cut homebuilding costs 50%.

Ex-SpaceX engineer's startup aims to cut homebuilding costs 50%. American Housing Corp., founded by a former SpaceX engineer, says its factory-built, Lego-style rowhome system can cut construction costs 30% to 50% versus conventional homebuilding, and is raising a Series A to scale production. A startup founded by a former SpaceX engineer says it can build family-sized rowhomes for 30% to 50% less than a conventional homebuilder by treating construction like an engineering problem instead of a trade, according to an exclusive interview with Realtor.com. American Housing Corp., based in Austin, Texas, is a vertically integrated developer and manufacturer that builds pre-fabricated components - insulated wall panels, floors, stairs and roofing - that are flat-packed into shipping containers, trucked to a site and assembled "like Lego" into three-story townhomes, according to CEO and co-founder Riley Meik. From Starship flaps to housing "missing middle" Meik, a mechanical engineer, left Brigham Young University to start a suborbital rocket-launch company before being hired by SpaceX to work on Starship's aeronautic flaps. He told Realtor.com the idea for AHC came from watching housing get built by hand near Los Angeles job sites while working at SpaceX. "There has been so much evolution and progress over the past 50 years introducing robotics and automation into the production process," Meik said. "Look at housing during that same timeline: quality has been going down while cost has been going up. It's the opposite." AHC's approach borrows directly from SpaceX and Tesla's playbook: full vertical integration, with raw materials entering one door and finished components leaving the other, and a focus on a single, engineered building material. The company's structural wall panels use magnesium oxide board reinforced with fiberglass - a Class-A fire-rated material Meik said was chosen after "lots of trial and error" for its acoustic, thermal and cost properties. Floors use cold-formed steel rather than lumber trusses, assembled with rivets "more common in aerospace and automotive" than in home construction. The company settled on three-story rowhomes as its core product because, Meik said, "the key to solving the housing crisis in the U.S. is figuring out how to build 'missing middle' housing at scale in the country's most desirable cities and neighborhoods" - denser than a detached single-family home but still family-sized. Backed by $7 million so far, seeking a Series A. AHC has raised $7 million in pre-seed and seed capital from Flux Capital, Antler and Boost Capital Partners, and Meik told Realtor.com a Series A round of more than $10 million is in the works. The company plans to use that capital to build a 230,000-square-foot factory capable of producing 1,200 townhomes a year, its near-term production goal, scaling up from its current 50,000-square-foot facility. Three co-founders round out the leadership team: Will Davis, a Cornell-educated former General Motors engineer overseeing software; Bobby Fijan, a Wharton graduate who previously worked on Philadelphia-area office-to-residential conversions and now leads real estate acquisition; and Harris Rothaermel, a BYU graduate with aerospace experience at NASA and Varda Space Industries. What it means. AHC's cost-savings claim - 30% to 50% below a conventional homebuilder - is the company's own estimate, not an independently verified figure, and the startup has not yet built at the 1,200-home annual scale it is targeting. The pitch nonetheless lands amid growing public acknowledgment of the underlying problem: large national homebuilders have said it is increasingly difficult to profit from a traditional starter home at today's land, labor and material costs, which is part of why factory-built and modular approaches keep attracting venture capital. Whether AHC's aerospace-inspired manufacturing model can scale to thousands of units annually while holding its promised cost advantage remains unproven outside its current pilot factory.