I applied through university. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at SpaceX (Hawthorne, CA) in Nov 2014
Interview
Two phone interviews: one was a mix of behavioral and technical, the other purely technical. Each lasted about 45 minutes.
Then, the on-site interview onslaught you may have heard before: they flew me down to LA and put me up in an awesome suite in Redondo Beach, and had me come to the Hawthorne headquarters at 9 am one morning. The interview is in two segments, a presentation and a number of one-on-ones.
I gave a fifteen-minute slideshow and talk about a project I'd worked on for school to four engineers and a hiring manager, then fielded questions from them about a number of different aspects of the project. Things like what I could have done differently under different constraints, math behind some of my finished work, etc. This went on for about half an hour, and also touched on some of my past internship experiences.
After the presentation and questioning, I was directed to wait in a separate conference room while they deliberated about me. At that point I was pretty nervous because some applicants are dismissed there, but after about ten minutes one of the engineers came in and assured me that things were going well. He and I believe three others took turns interviewing me one-on-one for about 25 minutes each. I asked and answered all kinds of questions, ranging from thermodynamics concepts and general things about the team to large consulting-type problems.
Finally (this was around noon), I had lunch with a few members of the team before leaving. Two and a half weeks later, I received an offer from the hiring manager.
Draw the water/steam flows in a combined-cycle power plant. What are some reasonable temperatures and pressures for each flow? How will these temperatures and pressures change as the plant ages?
interview process was long and tedious. started with a recruiter screening, minimal technical questions, then moved to a hiring manager technical interview, following this was a technical presentation to a panel of engineers, i was then brought on site for an interview which included another pannel interview, site walkaround and questioning, then a written multiple choise mechanical assessmnet.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
shear and moment diagrams, fluid basics, pipe flow, compressible flow.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at SpaceX (Cape Canaveral, FL) in Nov 2025
Interview
The interview started with 15 minute going through your past project / experiences. Followed up with 15 minute rapid fire technical questions (3 questions including topics from mechanical, fluids, and FEA)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If your FEA tells you the part fails, do you trust it?
The first round was a technical interview with lots of rapid fire technical questions. It was over the phone which made it hard to stop and think about how to answer each question.
