Just wrapped the SpaceX product design / UX interview process. This is a niche one since there aren't many design roles at SpaceX and almost no posts about what the loop looks like, so I'm writing it up.
Background: I'm a senior product designer, 8 years, primarily B2B and enterprise. SpaceX reached out to me for a role on their internal tooling side, not consumer-facing.
The loop: 4 rounds
Portfolio presentation (60 minutes): Presented 2 case studies. They told me to focus on process over pretty pixels, which is exactly right. They wanted to understand how I got to decisions, not what the final UI looked like. One interviewer specifically asked me to walk through a moment where user research contradicted what the engineering team assumed. That question tells you a lot about what they value.
Design exercise (take-home, 3 hours): They gave me a real internal tooling problem and asked me to define the problem, show a user flow, and provide wireframes (not high-fidelity). Figma was fine. The brief was intentionally vague. That was the test. Designers who scope ambiguous problems well did better than ones who ran toward aesthetics immediately.
Technical round (cross-functional): This was an interview with a software engineer about how I work with eng teams. They asked about my handoff process, how I spec edge cases, and whether I can participate in sprint planning meaningfully. It's not a design-skills test, it's a collaboration test. Don't be the designer who "just sends Figma files."
Behavioral + hiring manager: Why SpaceX (everyone asks this), how I handle conflict with stakeholders, and what I do when I think the product direction is wrong.
Overall: This loop is very engineering-first. Design at SpaceX feels like a service org supporting technical teams. If you want to drive product direction from design, this probably isn't your place. If you want to do complex systems work with real constraints, it's genuinely interesting.