Senior GNC Engineer — Spacecraft Attitude & Orbit Lead

Reflect Orbital; Hawthorne, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Broad choice of medical/dental/vision

HSA, FSA, and 401K

Unlimited paid time off

Healthy lunches provided daily

Job summary

Reflect Orbital in Hawthorne, CA, seeks a Senior GNC Engineer to shape in-orbit performance of a novel space vehicle. You will own dynamics, orbit propagation, flight software and HITL testing, bringing full-stack GNC capability to the table.

You will design and test closed-loop guidance for attitude and orbit, plan trajectories, develop a 6-DOF simulator, and implement GNC algorithms in C++/Rust, validating them in flight-like environments.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional GNC engineering experience, ideally on spacecraft or other dynamically controlled vehicles.
• Clear technical ownership of a GNC subsystem that has flown, covering simulation, algorithms and flight software.
• Strong background in modeling physical systems from first principles, including flexible body dynamics, sensors, actuators and space environment.
• Expertise in state estimation design for attitude and orbit determination, validated in flight.
• Ability to verify and validate GNC flight software in an integrated environment, using HITL testing.
• Experience in guidance, maneuver and constellation design, including orbit selection, coverage and station-keeping.
• Experience in real-time spacecraft operations support, from commissioning through console operations to on-orbit anomaly resolution.
• Fluency in Python, C++ and/or Rust.

Responsibilities

• Come up with creative solutions to unique problems in precise sun-spot placement from space.
• Design, develop and test closed-loop GNC for attitude and orbit.
• Plan trajectories and attitude motion profiles satisfying constraints.
• Develop and own a 6-DOF simulation of vehicle attitude and dynamics; use for Monte Carlo analysis.
• Write GNC algorithms in flight software (C++/Rust) and validate them in HITL setups.
• Drive sensor and actuator selection with avionics engineers for reliable flight performance.
• Analyze and plan orbits and constellation design to maximize spot serving capability.

Skills

GNC engineering

State estimation

C++/Rust

Trajectory planning

Flight software

Job description

Reflect Orbital in Hawthorne, CA, seeks a Senior GNC Engineer to shape in-orbit performance of a novel space vehicle. You will own dynamics, orbit propagation, flight software and HITL testing, bringing full-stack GNC capability to the table.

You will design and test closed-loop guidance for attitude and orbit, plan trajectories, develop a 6-DOF simulator, and implement GNC algorithms in C++/Rust, validating them in flight-like environments.