Part-Time Spacecraft Contamination Control Engineer

Columbus Technologies; Greenbelt (MD); On-site; USD 103,000 - 207,000; Part time

Job summary

Columbus Technologies is seeking a Spacecraft Contamination Control Engineer to support Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. The role focuses on analysis, verification, and management of contamination requirements across the spacecraft lifecycle.

Responsibilities include evaluating contamination risks, budgets, and mitigation strategies, and collaborating with cross-disciplinary teams to ensure spacecraft hardware and mission success.

Qualifications

• B.S. degree in Engineering or related discipline with 10+ years of relevant experience, or an M.S. with 7+ years.
• Experience determining contamination sensitivities and evaluating or developing contamination requirements.
• Experience evaluating contamination controls across design, manufacturing, integration, test, and inspection activities.
• Experience with molecular and particulate contamination, outgassing, transport/deposition, cleanroom practices, materials, vacuum systems, and hardware cleaning and inspection methods.
• Experience with aerospace contamination control processes for spacecraft, launch systems, or other contamination-sensitive flight hardware.
• Must be a U.S. Citizen and successfully complete a U.S. Government background investigation.
• Strong technical communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work effectively across multidisciplinary engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate contamination sensitivities, requirements, controls, budgets, and mitigation strategies for spacecraft, payloads, and associated hardware.
• Analyze molecular and particulate contamination sources, transport, and deposition, including potential impacts to spacecraft, payloads, instruments, and docking surfaces.
• Review and assess contamination control plans, analyses, verification approaches, and technical documentation throughout design, manufacturing, integration, testing, transportation, and operations.
• Support the development, review, and refinement of contamination-related requirements and verification approaches, including assessment of proposed compliance methods and verification evidence.
• Evaluate contamination risks associated with materials, hardware processing, cleaning, inspection, storage, transportation, and cleanroom environments.
• Participate in qualification, acceptance, and other testing activities and evaluate test results and demonstrated performance.
• Investigate contamination issues and anomalies, perform or support root-cause analysis, and evaluate proposed corrective actions.
• Apply flight and test experience, lessons learned, and engineering analysis to assess contamination risks, hardware acceptance criteria, and proposed design or process changes.
• Collaborate with thermal, fluids, propulsion, materials, systems engineering, mission design, and other disciplines to evaluate contamination interactions and integrated spacecraft performance.
• Provide independent technical assessments, identify risks and uncertainties, and develop recommendations for engineering and program leadership.
• Participate in technical reviews and engineering activities with spacecraft developers, test organizations, and other technical partners.
• Provide technical guidance and mentoring in spacecraft contamination control methods, analysis, and practices.

Skills

Spacecraft contamination

Contamination analysis

Molecular contamination

Particulate contamination

Cleanroom practices

Vacuum systems

Technical communication

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Education

B.S. in Engineering

M.S. in Engineering

Ph.D. in Engineering

Tools

MATLAB

Thermal Desktop

Contamination analysis software

Job description

Columbus Technologies is seeking a Spacecraft Contamination Control Engineer to support Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. The role focuses on analysis, verification, and management of contamination requirements across the spacecraft lifecycle.

Responsibilities include evaluating contamination risks, budgets, and mitigation strategies, and collaborating with cross-disciplinary teams to ensure spacecraft hardware and mission success.