Andrew Gong

About Andrew Gong

As SpaceX Starship Software Engineering Director, led the re-architecture of Starship’s core software framework, achieving 90% cross-mission code reuse, reducing development cycles from suborbital tests to deep space missions by 60%, and lowering launch costs to 1% of traditional aerospace levels. Designed a nine-layer fault-tolerant system that withstood the extreme challenges of 33-engine simultaneous ignition and 1600°C atmospheric reentry, ensuring mission reliability through 3,725 hardware-in-the-loop tests and real-time processing of millions of sensor data points per second. Pioneered an AI-driven autonomous verification framework that generated 85% of test cases using machine learning, accelerating software iteration speed by 4x while achieving zero-defect certification under NASA’s crewed CCAP program, laying the digital foundation for Starship’s Mars colonization

Experience

1. Director of Software Engineering - Starship

   SpaceX

   Jan 2021 — Present · FL, US

Education

• Boston University

  Master's degree

  1999 — 2002