GNC Engineer II: Mission Formulation

Rocket Lab; Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 115,000 - 176,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grant

Stock Purchase Program

Comprehensive benefits

401(k)

Job summary

Rocket Lab, headquartered in Long Beach, CA, seeks a GNC Engineer II - Mission Formulation to design, analyze, and test guidance, navigation, and control for launches. You’ll contribute to mission trades, develop trajectories, and work with customers to define requirements. The role includes HITL testing, Monte Carlo analyses, and flight-code releases.

You’ll join a fast-growing space company delivering missions with advanced GNC solutions and collaborate across engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 2+ years of industry experience in GNC/ADCS.
• Understanding of orbital mechanics and/ or closed-loop control systems, preferably launch vehicles.
• Experience with trajectory optimization.
• Proven experience developing real-time control and/or estimation algorithms in autonomous vehicles, preferably launch vehicles.
• Active Secret security clearance OR Ability to obtain and maintain one.

Responsibilities

• GNC contact to Business Development for proposals and mission definition
• Launch and mission operational concept development
• Orbital and suborbital trajectory design and analysis
• Work with external stakeholders and customers for mission-specific requirements engineering
• Document proposed GNC solutions and participate in design reviews with customers
• Support hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) testing to verify trajectories, GNC, and flight code performance
• Conduct Monte Carlo simulation analyses to define and verify launch and mission operations
• Develop and support release of flight code for pre-launch ground testing, launch, and mission operations
• Develop tools and processes for automating common GNC modelling and analysis tasks

Education

Bachelor’s degree

2+ years of industry experience in GNC/ADCS

Tools

git version control

Python development

MATLAB/SciPy

C/C++

POST/ASTOS/TAOS tools

Job description

Rocket Lab, headquartered in Long Beach, CA, seeks a GNC Engineer II - Mission Formulation to design, analyze, and test guidance, navigation, and control for launches. You’ll contribute to mission trades, develop trajectories, and work with customers to define requirements. The role includes HITL testing, Monte Carlo analyses, and flight-code releases.

You’ll join a fast-growing space company delivering missions with advanced GNC solutions and collaborate across engineering teams.