The opportunity
SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.
What you'll do
Lead the design, major refactors, redesigns, and ongoing evolution of the: core C++ vehicle dynamics simulator and associated testing/support infrastructure for Starlink, ensuring it scales in performance and capability with the constellation.
Architect and improve high-performance C++ Monte Carlo simulation: infrastructure, including parallelization, dispersion handling, and reliability for large-scale runs.
Drive development of new simulation features, models, and tooling in: collaboration with users—focusing on performance, usability, and extensibility of the C++ core.
Own performance optimization, profiling, continuous integration,: unit/integration testing, and reliability improvements across the simulation stack.
Design and implement new testing frameworks, support infrastructure, and: visualization components to accelerate GNC development.
Collaborate cross-functionally to accurately model multi-body physics,: environmental effects, and hardware behaviors while maintaining rigorous software quality.
What they're looking for
- Bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline and 1+ years of software development: experience; OR 4+ years of professional software development experience in performant C++ OR numerical simulations
- Expert-level C++ skills focused on writing performant, simple, and safe code:: strong command of the language fundamentals, efficient memory management, multi-threading/concurrency, data-oriented design, and careful performance-oriented implementation (favoring straightforward, low-overhead solutions over complex abstractions or heavy STL use when they compromise speed or safety).
- Experience building or optimizing high-performance simulations, physics: engines, or real-time systems (e.g., game engines, multi-body dynamics, robotics, or aerospace simulators).
- High-performance computing (HPC) background: parallel computing, multi-threading, profiling/optimization tools, scalable architectures, or related techniques (Monte Carlo, distributed sims, etc.).
