Payload Engineer I: Space Autonomy & Optics

Inflection Managing Partner, Inc.; Northern, Los Angeles (KY, CA); Hybrid; USD 99,000 - 133,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity incentives

Flexible PTO

Comprehensive medical, dental & vision

Job summary

Lodestar is seeking an ambitious Payload Engineer I to join the payload team on CORONA, moving an integrated sensing and effector payload from lab breadboard to a qualified engineering model.

You will design, build, integrate and test the payload across optics, mechanical, avionics and software, working with senior engineers and reviewers at gates with USSF, Space Systems Command and AFRL.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's in Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical or Electronic Engineering, Physics, Optics/Photonics, Robotics, CS, or equivalent knowledge.
• 0-2 years of professional experience; early-career candidates encouraged.
• Hands-on evidence of building something real and making it work; equates to project work over grades.
• Proficiency in Python required.

Responsibilities

• Own the payload engineering model day to day: requirements, design, build, integration, test and write-up.
• Develop payload, autonomy, effector, power, thermal and pointing requirements and ICDs between payload, avionics and spacecraft bus.
• Prepare SRR, PDR and CDR packages and maintain verification matrix and risk register across gates.
• Integrate engineering model with effector subsystem, edge-compute avionics, and multimodal sensor suite.
• Perform optical alignment and verification, feed design iterations back to build.
• Run hardware-in-the-loop testing in the Void Lab and demonstrate end-to-end payload performance.
• Support environmental qualification including TVAC, launch vibration, EMC/EMI testing.
• Deliver end-to-end ground demonstration on a payload-in-the-loop testbed.
• Produce customer-facing documentation: test reports, qualification dossier, performance assessment.

Skills

Python

Hands-on building

Hardware experience

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Engineering/Physics/CS

Job description

Lodestar is seeking an ambitious Payload Engineer I to join the payload team on CORONA, moving an integrated sensing and effector payload from lab breadboard to a qualified engineering model.

You will design, build, integrate and test the payload across optics, mechanical, avionics and software, working with senior engineers and reviewers at gates with USSF, Space Systems Command and AFRL.