GNC (Guidance, Navigation & Control) Engineer

Reflectorbital; Hawthorne (CA); On-site; USD 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% coverage for medical/dental/vision

Access to HSA, FSA, and 401K

Unlimited paid time off

Healthy lunches provided daily

Job summary

A leading aerospace company in California seeks a GNC Engineer to develop and implement controllers for a new space vehicle. Your responsibilities will include simulation development, controller design, and collaboration with avionics teams. The ideal candidate will have prior experience with vehicle dynamics and control algorithms. Competitive compensation includes comprehensive benefits and unlimited paid time off.

Qualifications

• Clear technical ownership of vehicle controllers.
• Experience with sim environments and best practices.
• Experience implementing attitude control algorithms.

Responsibilities

• Develop 6-DOF simulation for vehicle attitude.
• Design and implement space-bound controllers.
• Work with avionics engineers for performance.
• Analyze orbits and trajectories for performance.

Skills

Vehicle dynamics modeling

Controller design

Attitude control algorithms

Simulation environments

Job description

At Reflect, you will be expected to move fast, have a lot of ownership and, most importantly, be able to effect change. If this excites you, we are interested in hearing about your best work and accomplishments across any domain and from any points in your life.

About the Role

As a GNC Engineer, you will enable us to predict the in-orbit performance of a novel space vehicle. Your work will span from vehicle-level dynamics modeling, to propagated orbital dynamics modeling, to controller design that we can implement on flight-ready avionics. We’re looking for someone who brings “full-stack” GNC development capability to the table.

Responsibilities

• Develop and own our 6-DOF simulation for understanding vehicle attitude, station-keeping, and orbital performance.

• Design and implement controllers on hardware going to space by actually writing software yourself

• Use simulation to constrain and inform ADCS design

• Work closely with avionics engineers to have performant, reliable attitude determination and control

• Analyze orbits, constellation designs, trajectories and attitude motion profiles to maximize vehicle service performance

• Contribute to high-level vehicle architecture decisions

• Support prototyping, implement controllers on prototype hardware

• Come up with creative solutions to novel problems that surround precisely putting a spot of reflected sunlight on the ground from space

Ideal Qualifications

• Clear prior technical ownership of functioning vehicle controllers and sim (I designed and simulated the GNC for “xyz” vehicle)

• Experience bringing up sim environments from scratch, opinionated/familiar with best practices.

• Experience with implementing attitude control and/or estimation algorithms on spacecraft

• Experience with verification and validation of GNC flight software in an integrated environment, leveraging 6-DOF simulation and HITL testing.

Even if you don’t meet 100% of the above qualifications, we are likely still interested in hearing from you. Hiring exceptional individuals is our #1 priority, and we believe that exceptional people often have highly unusual backgrounds.

We are also interested in carving out unique roles for unconventional people that we are excited about working with.

Benefits

Reflect Orbital’s success will hinge on our team, which is why our compensation and benefits plan is designed to reward our employees and support their families as generously as we’re able.

• Broad choice of medical/dental/vision coverage, Reflect covers 100% of each base-policy

• Access to HSA, FSA, and 401K

• Unlimited paid time off, two-weeks per year encouraged

• Healthy lunches provided daily

Equal Opportunity

Reflect Orbital is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Reflect Orbital is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

More about Reflect Orbital:

Learn more about our team here.