Position Details

Location: Los Angeles (Hawthorne), CA

Employment Type: Full-time

Department: Starlight Solar

Travel: Frequent

The Mission

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.

Senior Manufacturing Engineer – Space Solar

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 Senior Manufacturing Engineer on the Starlight team, you will own the most critical processes on our space solar manufacturing line — defining how we scale from prototype to high-rate flight production. You'll set the technical direction for process development, drive yield and rate across the line, and mentor a growing manufacturing engineering team.

Responsibilities

Own the technical strategy for key manufacturing processes — including cell-interconnect-coverglass (CIC) integration, interconnect welding, coverglass attach, and panel layup — from development through high-rate production

Drive yield, rate, and cost across the solar manufacturing line, setting and hitting performance targets that scale with the business

Design and qualify precision tooling and automated cells that protect fragile hardware, eliminate assembly error, and minimize cycle time

Lead automation initiatives for novel processes such as cell laydown, interconnect bonding, and coverglass placement to ensure repeatability at scale

Partner deeply with cell and panel design engineering to shape solar array architecture through design for manufacturing (DFM), driving decisions that materially reduce cost and complexity downstream

Stand up in-process inspection systems — electroluminescence imaging, IV/flash test, and automated optical inspection of weld and bond joints — to catch defects at the source and continuously improve first-pass yield

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

Mentor manufacturing engineers, set technical bar, and grow the team's capability as the line scales

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, electrical, or a related engineering discipline

6+ years of manufacturing and process design experience, with demonstrated ownership of processes from development through production

Track record of taking manufacturing processes from prototype through qualification and into stable, high-rate production

Experience leading technical work across cross-functional teams (design, quality, operations, supply chain)

Preferred Qualifications

Master's degree in an engineering discipline

Direct experience manufacturing photovoltaic hardware — solar cells, strings, panels, or arrays — ideally multi-junction (III-V) cells for space or other high-reliability applications

Deep expertise in cell interconnect joining processes such as parallel-gap resistance welding or tab bonding, including process development, qualification, and weld/bond inspection

Hands-on experience scaling a manufacturing line from low-rate prototype to high-rate production, including rate readiness reviews and yield improvement campaigns

Experience leading automation programs — defining requirements, selecting integrators, and qualifying automated cells for production use

Proficiency with coverglass attach, encapsulation, and adhesive/RTV bonding processes for solar hardware

Strong background in electrical characterization of solar cells and panels — LIV/flash testing, electroluminescence, and IV-curve analysis