I recently went through the interview process with SpaceX, which was a challenging and insightful experience. The process started with a screening call, where the recruiter focused on my background, experience, and overall motivation for the role. After that, I had a technical phone interview with one of their engineers. This stage was more in-depth, with questions that tested both my fundamental knowledge and my ability to solve practical engineering problems. Following that, I was invited to the SpaceX headquarters for an on-site interview. The main component was a presentation of a project I had worked on in the past, delivered to a panel of engineers. After the presentation, they asked me a wide range of detailed questions, digging into my design choices, technical decisions, trade-offs, and what I learned throughout the project. The discussion was very thorough and highlighted how much emphasis SpaceX places on depth of understanding and technical rigor. I did not move forward to the next stage, which would have been a series of one-on-one interviews with several of the engineers and managers who attended my presentation. Despite not advancing further, I found the experience to be extremely valuable. The process was well-structured, fast-paced, and very demanding, reflecting the high standards and expectations at SpaceX.

First interview was ~30 minutes, mostly talking about the salary and culture of working there. Some light technical questions like what is Young's Modulus and stuff like that. Second round was more about wanting to see how you think, they set up a test failure scenario and wanted me to walk through how I would figure out what the issue was/mitigate it in the future.