Went through the SpaceX PM interview process last fall. Got an offer, turned it down for personal reasons. Sharing notes because the PM loop there is genuinely different from typical tech PM interviews and I did not find useful prep material beforehand.
First, the reality check: SpaceX PM roles skew heavily technical and deeply operational. They're not looking for the classic growth PM or consumer product PM archetype. The closest analogy is a technical program manager at a hardware company, but with actual product ownership. If your PM experience is entirely on consumer apps or B2B SaaS, you'll need to translate hard.
The rounds I went through:
Recruiter screen: Standard, with a strong emphasis on aerospace or defense or hardware experience. I had some adjacent background. They valued it.
Technical background interview: A 45-minute conversation with an engineering lead. No coding. But they asked me to explain the architecture of a system I'd owned, the trade-offs I made, and how I'd have done it differently. This weeded out people who don't actually understand what their engineers build.
Product case: Given a real operational problem (not Uber for rockets, something grounded in their actual work). Asked to walk through how I'd scope the problem, what data I'd gather, how I'd prioritize solutions. The case was time-pressured and ambiguous.
Behavioral round: Heavy on ownership and operating without hierarchy. Question like: "Describe a time you had to drive alignment across 5 stakeholders who disagreed on the right approach." The follow-up was always: what would you do differently.
Hiring manager: 30-minute conversation, mostly about how I think about product quality and reliability. Not typical PM questions about metrics or growth.
The loop was thorough. Took 7 weeks. If you're a PM candidate who's used to "tell me about yourself and here's a product design question", budget more time to prepare for the technical and operational depth here.