Manufacturing Engineer - Space Solar Hardware

Department: Starlight Solar

Location: Hawthorne, CA

Compensation: $120K – $160K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

Manufacturing Engineer – Space Solar Hardware

Position Details

Location: Los Angeles (Hawthorne), CA

Employment Type: Full-time

Department: Starlight Solar

Travel: Frequent

About Starpath

Starpath develops and manufactures the technologies that will enable humans to live on the Moon and Mars. Today, we are building robotic systems that locally produce the essential commodities a lunar civilization will require at extreme scale: water, power, and oxygen. Our ultimate goal is to build and operate a self-sustaining city on Mars.

The Role

The Starlight team is focused on dramatically improving space solar power to support Starpath's core mission and the greater space economy. Starlight manufactures the lowest cost and highest performance space solar ever, which will power the majority of new satellites built on Earth and all of Starpath's equipment on the Moon and Mars.

As a Manufacturing Engineer on the Starlight team, you will develop and own the processes, tooling, and inspection techniques that enable us to manufacture space solar hardware at high rate and with uncompromising quality.

Responsibilities

• Develop and perform acceptance testing of manufacturing processes, techniques, and tools to enable efficient and high-rate manufacturing

• Design and implement precision tooling to eliminate assembly error, improve quality, and minimize cycle time

• Automate novel processes to ensure repeatability on high-rate manufacturing lines

• Work closely with design engineering teams to influence solar panel architecture with design for manufacturing (DFM) improvements

• Stand up in-process inspection methods, including automated approaches, to catch issues at the source and improve first-pass yield

• Lead the handoff of hardware from development into production, ensuring processes are documented, stable, and ready to scale

• Push back on unnecessary complexity — simplify specs, streamline workflows, and cut overhead wherever it doesn't add value

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or advanced degree in aerospace, manufacturing, materials, mechanical engineering, or a related engineering discipline

• 1+ years of manufacturing and process design experience (internship and academic experience applicable)

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in an engineering discipline

• Hands-on experience with mixed value stream or high-rate manufacturing lines, focusing on maximizing yield and increasing rate

• Proficiency in mechanical assembly methods, testing, failure mode effects analysis, and troubleshooting

• Prior experience developing, maintaining, and improving weld processes and weld inspection techniques, including automation

• Experience using SQL or other data management tools to inform priorities and measure performance

• Exposure to aerospace, space, or other high-reliability hardware environments

Compensation & Benefits

• Location: Los Angeles (Hawthorne), CA

• Competitive salary plus equity package; compensation scales with candidate experience

• PTO & health/dental/vision coverage included

EAR REQUIREMENTS:

• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Equal Opportunity

Starpath is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.