Job alert: ‘Spaceport Mixologist’

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking a “Spaceport Mixologist” who can whip up space-themed drinks next to the company’s sprawling rocket factory in south Texas.

While space itself likely won’t be in their future, an experienced bartender — who will have one of the coolest job titles — will be tapped to join the hundreds of employees working on SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket system in rural Boca Chica, Texas. The mixologist will probably work out of the small house next to SpaceX’s budding spaceport that Musk calls the Starbase Tiki Bar and sling tiki drinks like the Test Pilot or Jet Pilot.

“Experience pairing drinks with a themed menu” is on the list of preferred skills. “SpaceX has a number of food service outlets and formats serving our workforce and are looking to add many more. We are searching for candidates who have superior mixology experience with a focus in resorts, bars, and full service restaurants,” the job description says.

Elon Musk

Also at SpaceX’s Boca Chica site is a restaurant and another bar in one of the company’s rocket-building towers that overlooks the whole spaceport. Musk calls that bar “High Bar” — in the “high bay” of the tower — and has described it as a “futuristic bar” with “360 degree windows & a glass floor looking down on the rocket factory.” SpaceX hosted a party at the High Bar in June.

SpaceX is staffing dozens of food service jobs at locations in Texas and California to feed the company’s growing workforce. Cooks, baristas and sous chefs are among the open positions under the food services category of SpaceX’s jobs page. While SpaceX’s food establishments mainly serve its own employees, the public might not be left out for long. “I super support public spaces around our production & launch sites, wherever it can be done safely and securely,” Musk tweeted in January. “When covid passes, we will open up our restaurant to the public & figure out ways to allow limited access to the High Bar.”

It’s not unusual for big tech and aerospace companies to employ chefs and baristas to serve their employees. From Facebook to Google to Boeing, they all have chefs and baristas, according to LinkedIn, and SpaceX has several chefs and baristas as well. But The Verge hasn’t been able to find evidence of any in-house mixologists at other companies. One of Musk’s other companies, Neuralink, just built it’s own bar, but it’s unclear whether the brain interface startup employs its own mixologist yet.

SpaceX’s Boca Chica site is in its infancy, but it could one day send humans to the Moon — the company won a contract from NASA in April to launch the first US astronauts to the lunar surface since 1972. But before that moonshot happens, and probably before the tiki bar and restaurant open to the public, SpaceX has a ways to go ‘maturing’ the more critical functions at Musk’s Starbase.