Senior GNC Engineer - Autonomous Spacecraft Navigation & Estimation

Approach Venture; Denver (CO); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Early-stage equity

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Paid parental leave

Three weeks vacation

Job summary

Approach Venture in Denver, CO, seeks a Senior GNC Engineer to lead navigation and state estimation for autonomous spacecraft platforms. You will own flight-critical navigation software supporting rendezvous, proximity operations, docking, and orbital navigation, working with controls, perception, avionics, embedded software, and systems engineering teams.

The role emphasizes ownership from concept through on-orbit operations, with a focus on robust estimator design, sensor fusion architecture,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related technical discipline as listed.
• 5 years of professional GN&C experience.
• Strong C and Python software development skills.
• Experience designing Kalman Filters or similar estimation techniques.
• Experience developing sensor fusion algorithms for autonomous systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead navigation and state estimation algorithm development for autonomous flight operations.
• Design, implement, and validate Kalman filters and other probabilistic estimators.
• Develop relative navigation algorithms for rendezvous, docking, and formation flight.
• Create onboard sensor fusion architectures for multi-sensor state estimation.
• Develop models and estimation methods for optical, inertial, and ranging sensors.
• Define navigation accuracy requirements and allocate error budgets.
• Develop orbit determination and orbital propagation algorithms for spacecraft operations.
• Analyze navigation performance using simulations, hardware tests, and flight data.
• Support hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop testing campaigns.
• Develop analysis tools and visualization utilities using C and Python.
• Investigate navigation anomalies and improve estimator robustness.
• Collaborate with controls, perception, avionics, embedded software, and systems engineering teams to integrate navigation into the flight system.

Skills

C

Python

Sensor fusion

State estimation

Kalman Filters

Autonomous systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or CS

Tools

Git / Version control

Job description

Approach Venture in Denver, CO, seeks a Senior GNC Engineer to lead navigation and state estimation for autonomous spacecraft platforms. You will own flight-critical navigation software supporting rendezvous, proximity operations, docking, and orbital navigation, working with controls, perception, avionics, embedded software, and systems engineering teams.

The role emphasizes ownership from concept through on-orbit operations, with a focus on robust estimator design, sensor fusion architecture,