Elon Musk's SpaceX is hiring a trader to build and lead a natural gas trading team, a move designed to support the spaceflight company's growing fuel and power needs.

According to the job postings, the role "focuses on physical and financial natural gas trading," underscoring how central the power-plant and manufacturing fuel has become to SpaceX's ambitions in chipmaking and space exploration. At large industrial fuel consumers, physical trading desks typically secure pipeline supply for operations, while financial positions are used to manage exposure to gas price swings — functions that would sit at the center of SpaceX's expanding energy footprint.

Earlier this month, SpaceX said it plans to build its own gas-fired power plants to meet the electricity requirements of the massive semiconductor manufacturing facility it is developing in Texas with Tesla Inc. Surging power demand from data centers and new factories has driven demand for new gas plants, and Musk has long been a proponent of vertical integration.

SpaceX also plans to build its own gas pipelines and is even looking to drill for natural gas, the company's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, told CNBC in June. These represent "huge investments to develop our own propellant and bring it to the rocket," she said.

SpaceX's massive Starship rocket uses super-chilled methane — the primary ingredient in natural gas — combined with liquid oxygen as propellant. Methane has become a favored rocket fuel partly because it burns cleaner than kerosene, easing engine reuse between flights, a relevant consideration for a rocket designed to fly repeatedly.

Other prominent technology companies, including Meta and OpenAI, have recently indicated plans to foray into power trading as their energy needs expand. The hiring race reflects how energy procurement has shifted from a back-office cost line to a strategic function at technology companies, as data centers and advanced manufacturing reshape electricity demand.

The SpaceX gas trading role will be based either in Cape Canaveral, Florida, or Starbase, Texas — not the traditional gas-trading hubs of Houston, Calgary, or Stamford, Connecticut — and remote work will not be considered, the postings say. Starbase, on the southern tip of Texas, serves as SpaceX's primary site for building and launching Starship.

SpaceX didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: Fortune