Chief Engineer, Space Systems Payloads

ICEYE US; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 195,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Flexible PTO

Friendly work environment

Extra perks

Job summary

ICEYE US, headquartered in Southern California, is seeking a Chief Engineer to own product-level technical authority from mission concept through flight readiness within the Space Systems team. You will be the primary technical authority for the payload program, guiding system architecture, requirements, and verification.

You will drive architectural decisions, chair lifecycle reviews, resolve cross-disciplinary conflicts, and coordinate with RF, digital, mechanical, software, and program

Qualifications

• 10+ years of systems or aerospace engineering on space, radar, or avionics programs.
• At least 3 years in a chief engineer, lead systems engineer, or equivalent technical authority.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with requirements decomposition, management, and verification closure on flight hardware programs.
• 5+ years of experience leading FMEAs, reliability analyses, and fault management design for flight hardware.
• Expertise in radar systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the product-level technical baseline, including system architecture, operating modes, interface definitions, and requirements; approve all changes to the baseline.
• Set technical direction and align subsystem teams to system-level objectives and constraints.
• Serve as the primary technical authority for all lifecycle reviews — SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, MRR, and FRR — and determine technical readiness to proceed through each gate.
• Resolve cross-disciplinary technical conflicts and approve major trade-study outcomes using input from the Systems Engineer and subsystem Responsible Engineers.
• Own the product-level technical risk register; determine whether risks are accepted, mitigated, or escalated to program leadership.
• Ensure requirements verification is complete and traceable before delivery; hold accountability for V&V closure across the full payload stack.
• Establish and track system-level Technical Performance Measures (mass, power, thermal, link, data rate budgets); flag margin erosion and drive resolution.
• Lead or oversee FMEA and reliability analyses at system and subsystem level; identify single-point failures and drive redundancy or mitigation decisions.
• Own the fault management architecture including FDIR strategies, safe modes, and anomaly response aligned to mission ConOps.
• Represent the program as the primary technical counterpart to the customer; own all customer-facing technical communications and commitments.

Skills

Systems engineering

Aerospace engineering

Radar systems

Requirements decomposition

FMEA / reliability analyses

Lifecycle reviews

Cross-functional leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering

Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering

Bachelor's degree in Systems Engineering

Master's degree in a relevant engineering discipline

Tools

FPGA

Real-time OS

Command/Telemetry protocols

Job description

ICEYE US, headquartered in Southern California, is seeking a Chief Engineer to own product-level technical authority from mission concept through flight readiness within the Space Systems team. You will be the primary technical authority for the payload program, guiding system architecture, requirements, and verification.

You will drive architectural decisions, chair lifecycle reviews, resolve cross-disciplinary conflicts, and coordinate with RF, digital, mechanical, software, and program