SpaceX has announced plans to build a “state-of-the-art” manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. The company has posted two new jobs available in the Austin area on the careers page of its official website.
According to the job postings, SpaceX is looking for an assembly-and-packaging equipment engineer and an automation-and-controls engineer, both of whom will work at the new facility when it is ready to begin operations. The automation engineer will work with the Starlink team and will be required to be available to travel to Los Angeles for job duties at least 25% of the time until the facility is complete.
The job listing for the automation engineer cited SpaceX’s ultimate goal of reaching Mars, with Starlink as part of the effort:
SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.
SpaceX already has a launch site in Boca Chica and a rocket development facility in Hawthorne. The new facility in Texas follows Elon Musk’s new plan to base as many of his companies’ operations in Texas as possible. He has also moved his charitable foundation to Texas.
Musk recently moved from California to Texas and sold some of his California properties to a developer, citing State of California policies that he says are overly authoritarian and unfriendly toward businesses. He has been especially critical of California’s reaction to COVID-19, although there is a possibility that he had a relatively mild case of the coronavirus last year. The results he got from a faster but less reliable version of the test for the virus were apparently contradictory.
State- and county-level policies forced him to temporarily close Tesla’s Gigafactory in Pasadena last year, though the state now deems the Gigafactory part of an “essential business.” Its employment of 10,000 California residents may have been a factor in the state’s decision.
On the flip side, Musk says he is “bullish” on Texas and especially the Austin area. He has previously been complimentary of Texas’ more friendly attitude toward businesses in the state.
“It’s going to be the biggest boomtown that America has seen in 50 years, at least, megaboom,” he said in an interview for Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Not that Musk might not be willing to develop his own “company town” within a reasonable commuting distance of the factories that he is building in the Austin area. In a March 2 tweet, he expressed interest in developing a city that he calls “Starbase, Texas.” He had this cute exchange that might have been a swiping reference to his recent plugging of cryptocurrencies, which caused a spike in the value of both Dogecoin and Marscoin:
His plans for Austin will certainly contribute thousands of jobs toward that prediction and especially increase the demand for engineers and manufacturing personnel in the area. Musk plans to build the next Tesla factory in the Austin area. The Boring Company also has several job postings in the area.
Bottom line here: If you are in the Austin, Texas, area and looking for a good career path to follow, consider becoming an engineer. If you can impress Elon Musk, you might have no trouble getting a job at one of his factories in the area once he gets them built.
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