This role pays more than
65%
of similar roles. Most pay
$155,000–$198,937
— the shaded band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$192k
versus about
$177k
for comparable roles.
Based on 240 similar postings.
Employer
About SpaceX
SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft with the mission of enabling humans to become a multi-planetary species. It operates the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship launch vehicles, as well as the Starlink satellite internet constellation.
SpaceX currently has
680 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$130,000–$165,000
across 442 roles with salary data.
As a Sr. Software Engineer (Vehicle Engineering) on the Artificial Intelligence Software Engineering team, you will develop core AI technologies to accelerate engineering processes for launch vehicles and spacecraft. You will be responsible for training internal models from scratch, fine-tuning foundation models like LLMs and vision systems, and utilizing Reinforcement Learning to post-train models. Your daily work involves building agentic tools, RAG-based systems, and MCP servers to solve complex data problems in avionics design, flight data review, and mission operations. You will utilize Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX within Linux environments while managing large-scale training pipelines on GPU clusters. The role focuses on creating production-grade AI tools for anomaly detection and predictive modeling to overcome engineering bottlenecks in the development of space hardware, including electronics and propulsion systems.
What does a Software Engineer earn in California?
Median $214000 from 775 postings across 63 companies.
Train internal engineering models from scratch and fine-tune them using Reinforcement Learning (RL).
Build agentic AI systems and multi-agent workflows to automate complex engineering tasks.
Develop RAG-based tools and MCP servers to extract knowledge from SpaceX data.
Create production-grade AI tools for anomaly detection, predictive modeling, and automated decision-making.
Design and optimize large-scale machine learning training pipelines on GPU clusters.
Manage the full AI model lifecycle including data preparation, infrastructure, deployment, and monitoring.
Develop specialized models to assist engineers in designing and testing space hardware like electronics and propulsion systems.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, math, or physics, or 4+ years of experience building and training AI/ML systems.
5+ years of experience in AI software engineering focusing on model training, fine-tuning, and machine learning systems.
5+ years of programming experience in Python.
Expert understanding of LLM transformer architectures and training procedures including pre-training, supervised fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning.
Experience designing and running large-scale ML training pipelines, including distributed training on GPU clusters and hyperparameter optimization.
Proficiency with modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX.
Experience building agentic AI systems, multi-agent workflows, and using tools like Docker and Kubernetes.
Must be a U.S. citizen, national, lawful permanent resident, or eligible for required export control authorizations.