Who We Are

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

The Starlight Solar team is dramatically improving space solar power to support both Starpath’s core mission and the broader space economy. We are manufacturing the lowest cost, highest performance space solar available, designed to power the majority of next-generation satellites and all of Starpath’s systems operating on the Moon and Mars.

This is a hands-on, pragmatic engineering leadership role. We are looking for someone with deep standards knowledge, strong reliability judgment, and the ability to build and own qualification philosophy from first principles.

What You’ll Do

• Own internal qualification and acceptance processes for space solar hardware
• Maintain environmental test plans and reference mission sets aligned with NASA GEVS and/or ECSS standards, as well as customer requirements
• Plan and coordinate environmental testing including TVAC, vibration, thermal cycling, radiation, and related campaigns
• Tailor test plans to explore mission-specific and off-nominal conditions beyond standard reference sets
• Drive right-sized risk analysis efforts including FMEA, FMECA-lite, and fault tree analysis when appropriate
• Lead failure analysis, root cause investigations, and corrective and preventive actions
• Partner closely with Manufacturing on quality controls, acceptance gates, and nonconformance workflows
• Clearly communicate testing philosophy, rationale, and results to customers and internal stakeholders
• Balance schedule, cost, and mission risk when defining qualification scope

You Should Have

• B.S. or higher in an engineering discipline
• 7+ years of experience in reliability, quality, or test engineering for high-reliability hardware, space or aerospace strongly preferred
• Direct experience building and owning environmental test programs from planning through execution
• Strong engineering judgment on test sufficiency versus over-testing
• Comfort aligning cross-functional stakeholders around a clear reliability philosophy

Nice to Have

• Radiation effects or space environment materials degradation experience
• Solar array or spacecraft power subsystem experience
• Direct ownership of hardware quality and acceptance testing processes
• Experience in a startup or rapid development hardware program

Compensation & Benefits

• Location: Hawthorne, CA
• Base salary: $135,000 to $170,000 plus equity, depending on experience
• PTO plus health, dental, and vision coverage

Export Compliance Requirement

To comply with U.S. Government export regulations, applicants must be a U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident, refugee, asylee, or otherwise eligible to obtain required U.S. Department of State authorization.

If you are excited about qualifying hardware that must survive launch loads, vacuum, radiation, and extreme thermal environments, and want to define the reliability backbone of next-generation space solar, we would love to hear from you.

Rethink recruit

New Jobs

Testing & Qualification Lead - Space Solar Hardware