Tesla continues to prepare for Gigafactory Mexico’s construction. It recently posted construction jobs for team leads, including architecture, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers.
Tesla listed 7 new job openings for team leads that would likely help with Gigafactory Mexico’s construction. All the new positions are located in San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León. Listed below are each team lead position and the responsibilities of each role.
Architecture Lead
- Lead the architectural scope of Gigafactory Mexico; responsible for developing architectural design packages for permitting and construction
- Review and develop designs that are cost-effective, constructible, code compliant while meeting Tesla’s quality and schedule requirements.
- Lead the development of Scope of Work, Basis of Design, Scheduling, and Estimating documents. Work with various manufacturing, construction, and facilities stakeholders to understand end-user needs. Manage and oversee the work of consultants.
- Develop process improvements, workflows, and templates to increase design productivity.
- Perform architectural assignments with no direction and no immediate supervision, and work independently as well as collaboratively with others toward design and technical solutions.
- Provide production of design drawings, presentation drawings, and digital models.
- Lead in the execution of construction administration responsibilities, as well as lead in the review and execution of design documents that meet building code.
Mechanical Design Engineer Lead
- Lead interdisciplinary teams on design projects
- Evaluate solutions and present findings to leadership
- Conduct feasibility studies, cost estimations, and equipment procurement
- Direct designers and collaborate with contractors in the field
- Ensure construction documents are followed and perform project closeouts
- Collaborate daily with interdisciplinary project teams
- Perform punch walks and project closeouts
Process Engineering Lead
- Apply engineering fundamentals and a broad set of process engineering tools to solve technical problems and create novel detailed designs for various gas and chemical systems such as refrigerants, cryogenic gases, inert gases, viscous fluids, corrosive fluids, reactive fluids, and flammable fluids.
- Lead front-end and detailed process designs for complex and program-level projects, including scope development, Basis of Design documentation, PFDs, P&IDs, 3D piping system design, pressure drop analysis and Pipe-Flo modeling, pressure relief valve calculations, equipment datasheets, Aspen simulation where required, and supporting Sequence of Operations / Controls Narrative documents.
- Provide technical expertise to the engineering/design team and other groups within Tesla as a subject matter expert (SME)
- Participate in commercial contracting activities, including development of scopes of work, evaluation of bid packages, performing bid analysis, competitive bid leveling, and working with Procurement to prepare commercial subcontracts.
- Participate in field construction and commissioning activities by serving as the point of contact for technical questions and real-time issue resolution, as well as maintaining master piping and equipment specifications.
- Review process design work performed by others on the Process Team to ensure every design maintains the highest level of quality, including P&IDs, plan drawings, and single-line iso’s
- Provide process engineering support to facilities operations and manufacturing teams to help resolve process bottlenecks and other long-standing issues and mentor less experienced engineers on the team.
Civil Engineering Lead
- Promote and protect Tesla’s reputation as a cutting-edge company producing the world’s most exciting cars and shifting the paradigm of personal transportation worldwide.
- Manage multiple projects throughout planning, design, bid, and construction phases. Define and plan project work scope, schedules, budget, and resource requirements.
- Independently develop high-quality civil engineering products, including construction document drawings, specifications, narratives, calculations, and utilize and improve civil design standards and details.
- Review drawings and proposals by vendors, engineers, and architects and drive multi-disciplinary coordination. Present 30%, 60%, [and] 90% model reviews to stakeholders and multi-discipline teams
- Effectively and proactively communicate project needs, changes, and status to both internal and external team members
- Conduct meetings and coordinate permitting agencies to obtain jurisdictional approvals of civil engineering scope.
Structural Engineering Lead
- Lead design for a variety of new and renovation projects from estimating through construction, including providing preliminary estimates and guidance on structural systems
- Evaluate, assign, and manage external consultant teams.
- Coordinate structural design on multidiscipline project teams, including Mechanical, Electrical, Piping/Plumbing (MEP), and architectural professionals.
- Complete knowledge of applicable building codes and structural design standards to conduct structural analysis along with the creation of justifying structural calculations
- Build a competent and effective team, including mentorship of less experienced engineering staff and development of design standards/procedures.
- Provide QA/QC of design drawings and calculations for both internal and external design scopes.
- Ability to articulate complex concepts to non-technical audiences. Present design concepts, including options with tradeoffs to high-level stakeholders to secure cross-functional buyoffs.
Lead Control System Engineer
- Participate in initial equipment conceptual development and carefully balance product specifications, process control requirements, layout complexity, cost, quality, and lead-time limits.
- Work closely with PLC and HMI development to integrate and develop innovative control solutions.
- Participate in continuous improvement activities with key stakeholders and engineering groups.
- Participate in specification and standard creation for instrument types, PLC/PSP Panels, and VFDs
- Participate in design validation practices, including LOPA and HazOp analyses.
- Participate in the execution of start-up and commissioning activities.
- Produce RFQs for release to Vendor and quote technical evaluation.
Electrical Engineering Lead
- Interface and collaborate with multiple discipline engineers
- Ability to multi-task, prioritize, and work in an extremely fast-paced environment.
- Collaborate with various design teams and liaise with manufacturing, construction, and facility stakeholders to understand the project requirements and deliver fully coordinated sets of construction documents.
- Interface and guide external electrical design consultants during project execution to ensure that design and specifications meet the project requirements
- Review electrical drawings, construction/procurement documents, and specifications for MV and LV electrical systems. Typical scope includes normal and emergency power distribution systems, lighting, and grounding systems.
- Attend on-site construction and commissioning activities by serving as the point of contact for technical questions and real-time issue resolution.
- Report to Electrical Project Lead
Tesla appointed Teresa Gutiérrez as the new country manager in Mexico. Following her appointment, Tesla ramped up hiring for sales, service, and delivery jobs. From Tesla’s recent job posts, it seems to be strengthening its positions in Mexico as it prepares to construct the new gigafactory.
Currently, the government of Nuevo León is preparing the surrounding area for Giga Mexico’s construction. It is expanding the Monterrey-Saltillio highway near Tesla Giga Mexico. The local government expects traffic to spike along the highway as Giga Mexico suppliers set up their own bases in Nuevo León.
Apply for Tesla Giga Mexico team lead positions here.
If you have any tips, contact me at maria@teslarati.com or via X @Writer_01001101.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy celebrated Christmas Eve by sharing personal experiences with Robotaxi vehicles that had no safety monitor or occupant in the driver’s seat. Musk described the system’s “perfect driving” around Austin, while Elluswamy posted video from the back seat, calling it “an amazing experience.”
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Elon and Ashok’s firsthand Robotaxi insights
Prior to Musk and the Tesla AI Director’s posts, sightings of unmanned Teslas navigating public roads were widely shared on social media. One such vehicle was spotted in Austin, Texas, which Elon Musk acknowleged by stating that “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Based on his Christmas Eve post, Musk seemed to have tested an unmanned Tesla himself. “A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving,” Musk wrote in his post.
Elluswamy responded with a 2-minute video showing himself in the rear of an unmanned Tesla. The video featured the vehicle’s empty front seats, as well as its smooth handling through real-world traffic. He captioned his video with the words, “It’s an amazing experience!”
Towards Unsupervised operations
During an xAI Hackathon earlier this month, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla owed be removing Safety Monitors from its Robotaxis in Austin in just three weeks. “Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks,” he said. Musk echoed similar estimates at the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call.
Considering the insights that were posted Musk and Elluswamy, it does appear that Tesla is working hard towards operating its Robotaxis with no safety monitors. This is quite impressive considering that the service was launched just earlier this year.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
News
NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
