Principal Cybersecurity Engineer (Starshield)

Leads a hands-on team of cybersecurity engineers who build and constantly test the cyber defences of Starshield, SpaceX's US government satellite constellation, from a base in Hawthorne. The team's first priority is being ready to respond at once to any active threat against Starshield systems.

The principal engineer grows the team and carries out Starshield's cyber defence strategy: tracking the threat landscape, designing countermeasures specific to Starshield, and running regular red-team style exercises that expose weaknesses and rehearse how the team would respond to an attack. They lead vulnerability discovery across the programme through internal bug hunts, encourage open-ended exploration, and use current tools including AI to find and fix bugs faster. The team works closely with the group building the internal systems that detect security events, helping improve how intrusion attempts are spotted and handled, and with the engineers adding security features to Starshield.

SpaceX asks for a relevant degree and seven or more years of cybersecurity work on live production systems, or ten years without a degree, experience managing direct reports, and a record of building adversary detection and incident response systems. Depth in networks and large distributed platforms, vulnerability triage, red or blue team assessments and continuity planning are preferred. A Top Secret clearance must be obtained and kept, and extended hours may be needed.