Lead Controls Engineer, Optical Beam Pointing (Mars Mission)

Relativity Space; Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 148,000 - 222,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity

PTO & sick leave

Parental leave

Learning stipend

Job summary

Relativity Space in Long Beach, CA is seeking a Senior Controls Engineer for optical beam pointing. You will own design and implementation of high-precision pointing algorithms, integrating sensor fusion, beacons, and inertial data to maintain optical links for a Mars mission.

You will collaborate with GNC, flight software, and spacecraft systems teams to prototype, simulate, and verify control architectures, delivering flight-ready solutions and supporting operations through commissioning and

Qualifications

• Undergraduate or graduate degree in a technical field with 3+ years of related experience.
• Strong background in control systems design and implementation including state-space methods and nonlinear control.
• Experience with spacecraft guidance, navigation and control systems.

Responsibilities

• Own design, development, and implementation of optical beam pointing and control algorithms for the Mars Orbiter mission.
• Develop control systems integrating optical sensors, gyroscopic data, and attitude estimates.
• Design and implement fast steering mirror control to reject jitter and maintain links.
• Develop sensor fusion and state estimation to enable robust pointing control.
• Define requirements, interfaces, and verification methods for pointing performance.
• Maintain models, simulations, and analysis tools to predict performance.
• Collaborate with flight software to define software requirements and interfaces.
• Support prototyping and ground testing including hardware-in-the-loop.
• Serve as technical authority across teams on optical beam pointing and control.
• Support flight operations during commissioning and on-orbit operations.

Skills

Control Systems

State Estimation

Kalman Filtering

Sensor Fusion

GNC

C++

Python

Flight Software

Matlab/Simulink

Optical Beam Pointing

Education

BS in Aerospace Engineering

MS/PhD desirable

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

C++

HIL Testing

Job description

Relativity Space in Long Beach, CA is seeking a Senior Controls Engineer for optical beam pointing. You will own design and implementation of high-precision pointing algorithms, integrating sensor fusion, beacons, and inertial data to maintain optical links for a Mars mission.

You will collaborate with GNC, flight software, and spacecraft systems teams to prototype, simulate, and verify control architectures, delivering flight-ready solutions and supporting operations through commissioning and