I was interviewed over the phone twice before being called out for an on-site interview. My phone screenings were relatively pleasant. My interviewers wanted to discuss the experiences I had mentioned on my resume and gave me a few questions about hypothetical engineering scenarios to think over. They did not run overlong and allowed me time to learn more about the position I was interviewing for and how SpaceX operated.

When I was called out to an on-site interview, I was made very comfortable at a nearby hotel for the night (I had to fly in from across the country). My interviewers made an effort to help me enjoy my visit to SpaceX, providing me with a tour and a pleasant, casual lunch with a current employee.

Aside from the niceties, the interview itself was very in-depth and at times intimidating. I was asked to give a presentation on a project I had worked on and was proud of, and was asked incisive questions throughout about the project and my role in it. I was also taken into separate interviews with one or two interviewers at a time and given engineering problems to solve.

This process went on all day, and it was past 6 p.m. when it was finally over. SpaceX took some time to get back to me, but eventually offered me a position that was quite different from the one for which I had interviewed. Instead of a position as a Falcon 9 Integration & Test Engineer, I was offered a position as a Certification Engineer in Dragon 2 Life Support Systems.

SpaceX kindly offered to fly me out again in order to meet some of that group to help me decide if I wanted to accept the position, but I wasn't able to make it. So, instead, they arranged phone calls with several engineers in the group. The position sounded interesting, so I ultimately accepted it, but it was somewhat disconcerting to be starting in a position so different from the one for which I'd interviewed.

If this part of the project you worked on had been constrained differently, how would you have made these engineering decisions?

What would that have looked like with different constraints?