Senior GNC Engineer: Mission Formulation & Trajectory

Segment (Twilio); Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 176,000; Full time

Job summary

Rocket Lab in Long Beach, CA (with locations in Littleton, CO) seeks a Senior GNC Engineer II – Mission Formulation to design, analyze, and test GNC for launches and missions. You will work on autonomous-vehicle concepts, real-time control algorithms, and flight code development for pre-launch and mission operations.

The role requires a Bachelor's in Engineering and 8+ years of experience, with strong Python, MATLAB/SciPy, C/C++, and ASTOS or similar tools.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Aerospace/Mechanical/Electrical).
• 8+ years engineering/analytical experience.
• Experience with real-time control/estimation algorithms for autonomous vehicles.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the GNC contact for Business Development proposals and mission definition.
• Develop launch and mission operational concepts.
• Design and analyze orbital and suborbital trajectories.
• Engage external stakeholders and customers for mission-specific requirements engineering.
• Document proposed GNC solutions and participate in design reviews with customers.
• Support hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) testing to verify trajectories, GNC, and flight code performance.
• Conduct Monte Carlo simulation analyses to define and verify launch and mission operations.
• Develop and support release of flight code for pre-launch ground testing, launch, and mission operations.
• Perform flight safety analyses prior to launch and provide day-of-launch support.
• Verify readiness of AFTS hardware and software.
• Develop tools and processes for automating common GNC modeling and analysis tasks.

Skills

Real-time control

Autonomous vehicles

Python development

MATLAB/SciPy

C/C++ development

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Aerospace/Mechanical/Electrical)

Tools

Git version control

ASTOS

Job description

Rocket Lab in Long Beach, CA (with locations in Littleton, CO) seeks a Senior GNC Engineer II – Mission Formulation to design, analyze, and test GNC for launches and missions. You will work on autonomous-vehicle concepts, real-time control algorithms, and flight code development for pre-launch and mission operations.

The role requires a Bachelor's in Engineering and 8+ years of experience, with strong Python, MATLAB/SciPy, C/C++, and ASTOS or similar tools.