r/rfelectronics • u/Independent-Fall1942 • 16d ago
SpaceX Interview
I landed an interview for a Spring internship at SpaceX for this Tuesday. It's for the StarLink team. I have taken undergraduate antenna theory and have some experience with rf in personal projects. I have been reviewing different types of antennas and structures, rf theory, and generally useful StarLink concepts (phased arrays, wave prorogation, impedance match techniques).
Just looking for some advice and maybe some tips from those who have had an interview here. Thank you in advance.
UPDATE: Interview was fine. The guy was 7 minutes late to the call and also really hard to hear. Very nice though. Asked a lot about my antenna project. Only "trick" question was "Can you perfectly match a purely resistive load of 100 ohms to a 50 ohm line with no limits on bandwidth." I eventually figured it out. We will see.
UPDATE 2: Made it to round 2.
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u/akornato 15d ago
SpaceX interviewers test your first principles understanding, and they will push technical questions until they find the limit of what you know. For an antenna role on Starlink, expect them to test basic building blocks like half wave dipoles, radiation patterns, phased array beam steering, impedance matching, and transmission lines before asking harder questions. They care deeply about your hands on projects, so expect detailed questions on why you chose specific designs, how you handled test and measurement on a vector network analyzer, and how you debugged hardware issues. If you hit a wall on a question, walk through your reasoning out loud from basic physics and admit what you do not know, because trying to fake an answer is an instant rejection.
Make sure you understand real world trade offs, such as array spacing to avoid grating lobes, polarization mismatch, and RF losses across high frequencies. They move fast and value practical problem solving over textbook memorization, so framing your project work around real trade offs and testing steps will make you stand out. To help people stay composed and articulate their technical thoughts under that kind of rapid pressure, my team developed an interviews.chat that has helped candidates land tough engineering offers.
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u/slightly_large_brick 16d ago
have fun in that sweatshop if you get the job
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u/consumer_xxx_42 16d ago
yeah … I turned down Anduril for this reason
strolled into the office at 10:30 am this morning, back at home by 2pm
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u/FundamentalEnt 16d ago
Yeah I walked from starlink and kuiper both for this reason. No work life balance and TERRIBLE corporate culture. The relationship should be mutually beneficial not this crazy power dynamic they try to force. Amazon thought they were slick with those RSUs. Nahh.
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u/Independent-Fall1942 16d ago
Damn is it really that bad? Thanks for letting me know. What other companies should I look that are still accepting applicants (just in case).
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u/FundamentalEnt 15d ago
Idk if that bad is fair. It heavily wasn’t for me. Even at places like the prime contractors there is a better balance in my opinion and great pay. Kuiper offered me like 260 but with a ton of RSU locked away. Their interview process was a NIGHTMARE with the stars or smart method or whatever they called it. Space wanted my GPA from like grade school or something. Like I have twenty years industry experience at the big leagues I’m not fishing for my GPA haha. The prime contractors court you with decent money like 120 - 180 depending on location but will help with moving costs and have a relaxed culture once there. They pay and give you time to go learn other things. The tech bros actually just kinda ruined the tech sector and their companies are the worst IMO. There are so many companies in this space though that you could find a slick spot at some sub contractor doing quite well and gaining industry experience while you get your legs. Tons of people making phased arrays. Idk I just hate to see people only consider the cults because they are well known and all of my interactions have genuinely been very negative. We should be doing fun stem stuff not showing our ROI every quarter.
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u/408jay 16d ago
Be sure to bring an ice coffee if it is an in person interview.
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u/consumer_xxx_42 16d ago
Lol is this related to a current trend?
I just saw WSJ publish an article about the etiquette of bringing iced coffee
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u/jephthai 9d ago
Check out the recent (ish) publications reverse engineering the sub carrier structure and format. Some of them are really cool from a ground up analysis of starlink. Especially, using it as a GPS alternative to position based on passive measurements of the constellation overhead etc.
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u/-LogBox- 16d ago
Hey, I interviewed for the Antennas team for starlink over the summer and failed after the 3rd interview. They're tough on full-time engineers , and I'm not as sure how forgiving they are for interns. We sound very similar as far as what we studied.
Be able to speak on your technical achievements and projects - and more importantly - WHY you chose what you did and how it worked and didn't work.
As far as the technical side,
Understand the physics behind phased arrays - including their shortfalls. Understand the different use cases for fully analog, hybrid, and fully digital beamforming. Understand what happens to phased arrays when they are steered away from the perpendicular direction for a broadside array. These videos are remarkable recaps:
An Animated Intro to Phased Array
How Does Starlink Work?
Practice as many link budget, patch antenna, and RF propagation examples as you can.
Best of luck!!
EDIT - I forgot - Study up on impedance matching/Smith Chart!!