Mission Architect: Global Space Network, Customer-Facing

Northwood Space; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Northwood Space is a modern space infrastructure company building a global network of phased array ground stations for real-time satellite communications. We seek a Forward Deployed Engineer to guide customers from first conversation through deployment, collaborating with BD, Engineering, and Program Management to translate mission needs into actionable priorities.

The role emphasizes hands-on technical work with customers, on-site deployment, and shaping product requirements while ensuring

Qualifications

• 7+ years in customer-facing technical roles: solutions or systems engineering, mission operations, technical business development, capture engineering, solutions architecture, or TAM.

Responsibilities

• Make customer missions succeed on Northwood's network.
• Serve as the primary technical contact for customers during capture, evaluation, onboarding, and post-deployment.
• Get hands-on with implementation and integration — working directly alongside customers and Engineering to bring up, troubleshoot, and validate their operations on the network.
• Ship code, debug integrations, and validate operations alongside customers and Engineering.
• Support Business Development on qualification, proposals, and expansion.
• Lead technical discovery, exchanges, demos, and readiness reviews alongside Program Management.
• Learn each customer's mission, workflows, constraints, decision criteria, and success metrics in depth.
• Translate customer needs into clear priorities for Engineering, Product, and BD.
• Surface friction points, adoption blockers, and recurring needs that should shape the product and network.
• Coordinate onboarding and deployment readiness — clarifying requirements, flagging risks, and aligning internal teams around customer objectives.
• Build reusable discovery frameworks and customer-facing materials that help Northwood scale capture and customer success.

Skills

Customer-facing experience

Mission engineering

Clearance TS/SCI

Travel up to 30%

Education

Bachelor's in EE/CE/CS/Aerospace

Job description

Northwood Space is a modern space infrastructure company building a global network of phased array ground stations for real-time satellite communications. We seek a Forward Deployed Engineer to guide customers from first conversation through deployment, collaborating with BD, Engineering, and Program Management to translate mission needs into actionable priorities.

The role emphasizes hands-on technical work with customers, on-site deployment, and shaping product requirements while ensuring