Junior Materials Engineer, Lab

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Job Summary:

SpaceX is a pioneering aerospace company focused on enabling human life on Mars through advanced technologies. They are seeking a motivated Lab Engineer to support their Materials Labs, which conduct a variety of material testing and development for all SpaceX programs. The role involves developing lab processes, analyzing discrepancies, and ensuring data integrity while working collaboratively within a new engineering team.

Responsibilities:

• Be directly responsible for a specific materials lab area or areas (mechanical, machining, chemistry, reliability, R&D, thermal, or characterization); understand all equipment in that domain, develop robust procedures and work instructions, directly support the team conducting tests, address non-conformances, enable the team, ensure data integrity, and drive improvement projects.

• Develop and qualify lab processes necessary for materials testing supporting all programs at SpaceX. Question requirements, delete parts and processes, simplify/optimize, accelerate, and automate.

• Analyze and disposition recurring lab discrepancies and lead multi-disciplinary teams on root cause analysis and corrective actions.

• Develop new and evaluate existing lab processes and equipment to reduce non-conformance frequency/severity, reduce operating costs/time, and increase utilization.

• Inform the equipment landscape in your lab area; develop preventative maintenance strategies, unlock new capabilities, enable the technician/specialist team, evaluate and implement state-of-the-industry techniques, resolve issues that impact or block material testing.

• Track and communicate status of laboratory projects to design, production, and materials engineers.

Qualifications:

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline.

• 1+ years of experience working in a materials laboratory.

• Must be comfortable working with chemicals including acids.

Preferred:

• Experience performing SEM, EDS, and other electron spectroscopy methods to evaluate aerospace materials.

• Experience performing DSC, DMA, TGA, and other thermal analytical methods to evaluate aerospace materials.

• Understanding of metallography, mechanical testing, heat treatment, machining, and sample processing.

• Experience carrying out technical tasks in direct support of aerospace engineering decision making.

• Experience working with multiple aerospace material systems in a laboratory or processing setting: metals, composites, polymers, and ceramics.

• Ability to train technicians on scientific equipment.

Company:

SpaceX is an aviation and aerospace company that designs, manufactures, and launches rockets and spacecraft. Founded in 2002, the company is headquartered in Hawthorne, California, USA, with a team of 1001-5000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.