Tooling Designer - High Pressure Die Casting
No salary listed
Mid
Bastrop, TX, USA
In PersonTravel up to 25% to external suppliers and other SpaceX facilities.
Manufacturing & Process EngineeringManufacturing Engineering
About the job
Requirements
- At least 3 years of professional experience designing high-pressure die-casting molds.
- Experience with Siemens NX.
- Willingness to work extended hours and weekends when required to support hardware delivery and production campaigns.
- Willingness to travel up to 25% to external suppliers and other SpaceX facilities.
- Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. lawful permanent resident, refugee, asylee, or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
Responsibilities
- Design high-precision die-casting tooling and trim dies to be manufactured and used in-house.
- Interpret and enable casting simulations and apply first-principles analysis to optimize gating, venting, cooling, and warp compensation.
- Account for shrinkage, warpage, and solidification to consistently meet stringent dimensional and metallurgical requirements.
- Own tooling designs from concept through tryout, qualification, and production release.
- Collaborate closely with casting engineers, materials scientists, and vendors to troubleshoot tooling-related casting defects and improve yield.
- Apply advanced geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) and tolerance stack-up analysis to complex airfoil geometries.
- Support design for manufacturability (DFM) initiatives to enable high-rate production while maintaining quality and cost targets.
- Interface with internal manufacturing teams and external tooling vendors to ensure designs are successfully translated into reliable production tooling.
- Drive continuous improvement of tooling standards, materials, and maintenance practices for high-volume casting operations.
Desired Qualifications
- In-depth knowledge of high-pressure die-casting tooling design.
- Extensive knowledge of high-pressure die-casting tool design requirements.
- Experience designing structural aluminum die-casting dies.
- Demonstrated success taking complex tooling from design through production qualification.
- Deep understanding of the die-casting process and associated shrinkage and distortion mechanisms.
- Experience working in a fast-paced, high-mix manufacturing environment.
- Hands-on experience supporting die tryouts and casting process development.
- Experience with manufacturing die-cast tooling, including computer numerical control (CNC) and tool making.
About the company
SpaceX builds and launches reusable rockets and spacecraft for NASA, the military, and companies, and it runs Starlink, a satellite internet service for homes and businesses. In 2020, its Dragon capsule became the first privately built spacecraft to carry astronauts to the International Space Station. Its Falcon 9 rocket lands its first stage so the booster can fly again, which cuts launch costs, while Starlink beams internet from low-orbit satellites to small dishes for a monthly fee. SpaceX also owns xAI, maker of the Grok chatbot and owner of the social network X, and is building Starship, a fully reusable rocket meant to carry people to the Moon and Mars. Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, and it is based in Starbase, Texas.
Company Size
10,001+
Company Stage
IPO
Headquarters
Starbase, Texas
Founded
2002
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Starlink demand keeps compounding: subscribers doubled to 12 million in the year to June 2026.
- Room to grow: SpaceX listed 2,693 open roles in October 2026, over a third of them for Starlink.
- Rivals rent its AI supercomputers: Claude maker Anthropic agreed in May 2026 to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion a month.
What critics are saying
- Stock grants swing hard: shares closed between $108 and $211 in the four months after the June 2026 IPO.
- Expect long weeks: 1,724 of SpaceX's 2,693 job posts in October 2026 mention extended hours and weekend work.
- AI spending outruns sales: SpaceX put $15.8 billion into AI data centers in the June 2026 quarter, double its revenue.
What makes SpaceX unique
- SpaceX is the world's busiest launcher by far: its 165 orbital launches in 2025 were nearly double China's total.
- Starlink carries the profits: it earned $1.7 billion in the June 2026 quarter, while rockets and AI lost $1.8 billion.
- Elon Musk has the final say: super-voting shares give him about 82% of shareholder votes after the June 2026 IPO.
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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.