Principal Launch Mission Manager

K2 Space Corporation; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in the company

Comprehensive benefits package including medical/dental/vision coverage

Paid parental leave

Job summary

K2 Space Corporation in Los Angeles is seeking a Launch Mission Manager to support customer and launch partner interfaces, ensuring successful spaceflight outcomes. This role involves certification and verification across multiple launch efforts, facilitating communications with internal and external teams.

Ideal candidates will have a Bachelor's degree in engineering, physics, or science, with 8+ years in technical aerospace or manufacturing. The position offers a competitive salary, with a range between $175,000 - $200,000 plus equity and a comprehensive benefits package.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in technical aerospace or manufacturing.
• 2+ years of experience managing projects, technical trades, and/or technical teams.
• Master's degree or PhD in an engineering or science discipline is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Function as K2 point of contact for all things related to certification.
• Serve as launch provider point of contact for launch vehicle ICDs.
• Support payload integration readiness reviews and pre-ship reviews.

Skills

Exceptional understanding of launch vehicles

Exceptional written and verbal communication skills

Project management experience

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering, physics, or science

Job description

The Role

K2 has a large set of customer and launch partners, ranging from rideshare hosted payloads to full constellation scale rollouts, spanning multiple launch vehicles, procurement methods, licensing methods, and launch sites. We are looking for exceptional individuals to support all of these customer and launch partner interfaces.

As a launch mission manager, you will be hands‑on supporting payload, vehicle, and launch integration certification, verification, and execution actions.

You’ll own certification across multiple threads, also working closely with our internal design reliability, program managers, and leadership team. You’ll be an advocate for K2 and our customer, pushing for simplification of process, implementation of lessons learned, and state‑of‑the‑art certification methods to enable our constellation‑level rollouts. You’ll work with our legal teams to enable appropriate licensing and insurance closure, and with our engineering teams to feed back best practices and lessons learned from integrated spacecraft testing to optimize future payload missions. You’ll help ensure successful spaceflight outcomes.

In this position you’ll be the voice of K2 in multiple forums and efforts – ultimately being responsible for ensuring there are no certification, verification, or execution show‑stoppers on day of payload integration, spacecraft testing, or launch.

Responsibilities

• Function as K2 point of contact for all things related to certification, including range safety compliance, launch vehicle user guide compliance, ground operations plan, payload certification plan, customer‑to‑launch provider interactions, and qualification reports.
• Serve as launch provider point of contact, helping ensure launch vehicle ICDs are closed and verified, launch operations plan is robust, and the mission executes flawlessly.
• Serve as payload provider point of contact in certification forums, ensuring payload meets all applicable requirements from both K2 and the launch provider.
• Support payload integration readiness reviews, pre‑ship reviews, launch and flight readiness reviews, in various capacities.
• Review and help shape future customer and launch vehicle contracts and SOWs.
• Shape our certification process for all of the above, helping come up with new methods for K2 to increase velocity.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, physics, or science.
• 8+ years of experience in technical aerospace or manufacturing.
• 2+ years of experience managing projects, technical trades, and/or technical teams.
• Exceptional understanding of launch vehicles, spacecraft, or other aerospace systems and their certification and/or verification processes.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.

Nice to Have

• Master’s degree or PhD in an engineering or science discipline.
• 10+ years of experience in technical aerospace or manufacturing.
• Active Top Secret or TS/SCI clearance.
• Experience leading spacecraft qualification, verification, or certification efforts for single or constellation‑level projects.
• Experience working with payload or launch provider contracts and SOWs.
• Proven ability to innovate in process improvement and lessons learned processes.
• Skilled in generating executive summaries to drive decision‑making through senior leadership discussions.
• Demonstrated track record of project ownership, responsibility for execution, and successful outcomes.
• Ability to travel up to 25% of the time.

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary range for this role is $175,000 - $200,000 + equity in the company.
• Salary will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, knowledge and skills, education, and experience level.
• Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical/dental/vision coverage, life insurance, paid parental leave, and many other perks.

K2 Space is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with K2 Space 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.