Senior Electrical Engineer - Space PAT & Tracking

Star Catcher; Jacksonville (FL); On-site; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

401(k)

Life insurance

Parental leave

Job summary

Star Catcher is seeking a Senior Electrical Engineer - Controls to lead PAT controls for spacecraft optical power delivery and to own architecture from requirements through on-orbit performance. You will coordinate with electrical, FPGA, flight software, optical, mechanical, and attitude-control leads to ensure robust tracking performance.

The role requires strong control theory, estimation, and signal-processing skills, plus experience translating algorithms to real-time embedded

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Controls, Applied Physics, or related field.
• 5+ years designing pointing, tracking, or guidance, navigation, and control systems.
• Strong foundation in control theory, estimation, and signal processing with hardware validation.
• Experience translating algorithms into real-time embedded implementations with FPGA/DSP/processor teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead pointing, acquisition, and tracking (PAT) controls from requirements to on-orbit performance assessment.
• Own PAT control and estimation architecture and coordinate interfaces with multiple subsystems.
• Develop detection, centroiding, estimation, and sensor-fusion algorithms for low SNR and motion conditions.
• Define sensor/actuator requirements, coordinate calibration, and verify results with model-based methods.
• Deliver reference models to FPGA/embedded teams and verify against reference models.
• Lead verification using simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and repeatable acceptance criteria.

Skills

PAT controls

Coordinating cross-discipline teams

Control theory

Estimation & sensor fusion

Real-time embedded implementation

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

FPGA/embedded software interfaces

System identification & hardware-in-lo

Signal processing

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering/Controls

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

FPGA

DSP/embedded processor

Job description

Star Catcher is seeking a Senior Electrical Engineer - Controls to lead PAT controls for spacecraft optical power delivery and to own architecture from requirements through on-orbit performance. You will coordinate with electrical, FPGA, flight software, optical, mechanical, and attitude-control leads to ensure robust tracking performance.

The role requires strong control theory, estimation, and signal-processing skills, plus experience translating algorithms to real-time embedded