30 Tech Skills That Tesla, SpaceX Want from Job Candidates – Dice Insights

Tesla and SpaceX are constantly in the news, for reasonspositiveandnegative. Whats undeniable is that both companies are doing incredible work in the arenas of electric cars and spaceflight, powered by thousands of ultra-skilled workers. What tech skills are these companies looking for?

For an answer, we can turn to Emsi Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country. Based on that data, we can analyze the skills that popped up most in Teslas job postings over the past 90 days. Take a look at the chart:

As you can see, Tesla is intensely interested in technologists who areskilled in Python, which is an ultra-popular generalist language. It also needs employees skilled in the principles of software engineering andproject management; given the complexity of projects (and challenges) facing the automaker, whoever takes those engineering and management roles will certainly have to be very, very good at multitasking.

Over at SpaceX, Python is also critical, along with Linux, C++, software engineering, and a bunch of health-related skills (its easy to surmise the lattermost deal with astronaut health in some way). Heres the overall skills breakdown over the past 90 days:

At both Tesla and SpaceX, job interviews will focus on your problem-solving abilities. Although Elon Musk, CEO of both companies, likely doesnt interview every single engineering candidate anymore, hetold the World Government Summitin 2017 that he liked asking interviewees, Tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them.

Chances are good that hiring managers and recruiters at both companies ask some variation of that question. And to be fair, its a straightforward line of questioning: If you can describe how you solved a problem in granular detail, your potential for landing a job at either company will rise. (If you werent responsible for tackling your previous companies challenges, by contrast, you likely wont be able to provide anything besides generalitiesand youll be in serious trouble.)

Even if youre not applying for a job at Tesla or SpaceX, keep in mind that providing as much detail as possible in response to job-interview questions is always important. Youll give the recruiter and/or hiring manager a better picture of how exactly youll add value to your prospective employer, including your unique approach to problems.

Before heading into any interview, its key to review a few relevant stories from your professional background. Rehearse beforehand, preferably with a friend or trusted colleague. If you know ahead of time that the interviewwill involve a whiteboard or keyboard test, practice with a few online challenges or tests before your interview.

One last, fun thing to mention: Musk has also asked prospective SpaceX engineers a fun little brainteaser:

Youre standing on the surface of the Earth. You walk one mile south, one mile west, and one mile north. You end up exactly where you started. Where are you?

The easy answer: the North Pole. However, as you can tell from the comments when we originally posted the question on Dice,there are lots of creative responses(still on Earth, anywhere with a broken compass, and so on). Although tech companies have largely stopped asking brainteasers in favor of other kinds of questions, theyre still a fun way to demonstrate how you think through a problem.

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30 Tech Skills That Tesla, SpaceX Want from Job Candidates - Dice Insights