Reliability Engineer

About Cowboy Space Corporation

Mission

Cowboy Space Corporation is solving the global energy crisis by building the infrastructure for abundant, resilient space-based solar energy. We are tackling one of humanity’s most complex engineering challenges with a world-class team dedicated to delivering a revolutionary power platform. Cowboy Space Corporation is transforming how civilization powers, computes and connects - from orbit to Earth.

Background

Cowboy Space Corporation is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our modular, scalable satellites collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit to enable multiple integrated applications: transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and providing secure, high bandwidth optical data transport.

Current energy and data systems rely on complex logistics and outdated infrastructure. Cowboy Space Corporation overcomes these challenges by enabling direct, on-demand, secure, and scalable energy distribution and data processing from space. This will revolutionize how we operate in orbit and on Earth, supporting the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM (In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing) operations, remote regions, and military bases.

Baiju Bhatt founded Cowboy Space Corporation in 2024. Inspired by his father’s work with NASA Langley Research Center, Baiju earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford before co-founding Robinhood, now a public company that has helped over 20 million Americans access the financial system. Cowboy Space Corporation has raised ~$365 million from Index Ventures, Interlagos, Construct Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and others.

This is an ambitious mission that demands extraordinary talent. Cowboy Space Corporation ’s team has worked at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis and NASA, and is based in San Carlos, CA. If you're ready to solve complex technical challenges and help build the most important energy company in the world, we want to hear from you.

The Role

You are our first Reliability Engineer, so you are not inheriting a process: you are deciding what it is. There is a well-worn reliability playbook in this industry, developed at large primes on programs with hundreds of engineers, and most of it will make us slower without making the rocket better. Your job is to figure out which parts earn their keep here, implement those, and leave the rest on the shelf.

You own how we reason about failure across the vehicle and the engines: where the single points of failure are, which ones we accept and why, where redundancy actually buys something versus just adding parts and interfaces, what test data says about margin, and what we do about the anomaly we saw on the stand last week. You will sit with the propulsion, structures, and avionics engineers rather than in a separate assurance org.

What You'll Do

• Decide what reliability toolkit this program runs on, write it down short enough that people follow it, and defend every inclusion and omission

• Pick analysis depth per subsystem instead of applying one standard everywhere — some interfaces deserve a full FMECA, some deserve a one-page failure walkdown, some deserve nothing

• Own the failure analyses: FMEA/FMECA, fault trees, single-point-failure identification, common-cause assessment, and the redundancy trades that follow

• Work the physics of failure, not just the statistics — fatigue, thermal cycling, cryogenic effects, contamination, wear, and the failure modes peculiar to LOX and LNG service

• Define what each test needs to prove, and get that instrumentation into the plan before the article is built

• Run failure review and corrective action fast enough that engineers use it voluntarily

• Build the lightest tooling that work: Python and version control, not an enterprise suite

• Teach. The leverage is not the analyses you run, it is the engineers who start thinking about failure modes before they get to you.

What We're Looking For

• 5-8 years in reliability, mission assurance, or systems engineering with real reliability ownership, on hardware where failure had consequences

• Command of the core methods: FMECA, fault tree analysis, common-cause analysis, allocation, Weibull and life-data analysis

• The judgment to right-size. You have seen reliability process applied where it did not belong, and you have opinions about the alternative

• Physics-of-failure instinct: you want to know why the part broke, not just how often parts like it break

• Hands-on test experience. You have stood next to hardware, watched it misbehave, and worked the anomaly to root cause

• Python sufficient to run Monte Carlos, fit life data, and build tools your teammates use without your help

• Statistical honesty about small samples. When a number rests on four data points and an assumed distribution, you say so instead of quoting three significant figures

• Willingness to make a call on incomplete information, state the assumptions, and revise

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, or similar.

Nice to Have

• Launch vehicle or liquid rocket engine experience, especially cryogenic

• Rotating machinery reliability: turbopumps, bearings, seals, dynamic environments

• Propulsion or structural test experience, including instrumentation planning and data reduction

• Experience standing up a reliability function from nothing

• Probabilistic risk assessment or structural reliability background

• Supplier quality or nonconformance experience, and the composure for a hard vendor conversation

• Reusable vehicle experience: inspection, refurbishment, reliability across flights of the same article

Compensation and Benefits

The salary range for this position is $140,000 - 185,000 annually. The actual base salary offered will depend on factors such as job-related skills, experience, qualifications, and internal equity.

• Equity in Cowboy Space Corp.

• Employees and their eligible dependents may enroll in medical, dental, and vision insurance

• 401(k) retirement savings plan

• Paid time off

• 10 paid holidays per calendar year

• Paid parental leave

• Relocation assistance if applicable

• Daily lunch in the office and a fully stocked kitchen with beverages and snacks

ITAR Requirements

• Export Control Requirement: To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), applicants must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about ITAR here.

Disclaimer

This job description is a summary of the primary duties and responsibilities of the job and position. It is not intended to be a comprehensive or all-inclusive listing of duties and responsibilities. Contents are subject to change at Cowboy Space Corp.’s discretion.

Cowboy Space Corp. is an equal employment opportunity employer. We consider individuals for employment or promotion according to their skills, abilities and experience. Cowboy Space Corp. is committed to complying with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religious creed, age, national origin, ancestry, physical, mental or developmental disability, sex (which includes pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and medical conditions relating to pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding), veteran status, military status, marital or registered domestic partnership status, medical condition (including cancer or genetic characteristics), genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, as well as any other category protected by federal, state or local laws.