Bill Riley

Senior Director / VP, Starship Engineering

Bill Riley is a senior SpaceX engineering leader central to the Starship program, having risen through structures and reliability roles. With a background in Formula SAE and a Cornell engineering pedigree, he is a fixture of the Starbase development effort, helping drive the rapid build-test-fly cadence behind Starship and Super Heavy — including the iterative campaign that produced the first booster tower catch and reflight. The Starbase program he helps lead pioneered an unusual engineering philosophy: build many cheap prototypes, fly them to failure, and learn faster than careful paper design allows. The string of Starship test flights — each pushing further on reentry, the tower catch, and booster reuse — is the visible product of that relentless, hardware-first cadence.