Senior Mission Operations Engineer - Lunar Ground Systems

Firefly Aerospace; Town of Texas (WI); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Firefly Aerospace is seeking a Mission Operations Engineer III to scale operations for multi-manifested missions to lunar locations. You will own the ground segment architecture and develop Flight Operations Products (procedures, scripts, and processes) enabling lunar landing.

You will bridge spacecraft subsystems and real-time execution, leading the mission from planning through testing and simulations, driving cross-team coordination and long-term operations planning.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering or related discipline.
• 7–12+ years of professional aerospace experience with mission lifecycle focus.
• Proven track record leading a major mission phase or ground segment development campaign.
• Experience architecting frameworks for ground systems and simulation campaigns.
• Proficiency in software for automating ground tasks and mission-data processing.
• Active or previously held U.S. government security clearance (Secret/TS/TS-SCI).

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end ground segment architecture and enterprise requirements (L0–L3).
• Define scope and requirements for mission-specific ground segment specifications across domains.
• Direct verification and validation campaigns from Site Acceptance Testing through Mission Scenario Testing.
• Own configuration control of the ground segment and access management for operators.
• Coordinate cross-team effort among ground service providers, IT, cyber, and flight dynamics.

Skills

Mission operations

Ground systems

Simulation campaigns

Automation scripts

Security clearance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering or related discipline

Tools

Simulation software

Job description

Firefly Aerospace is seeking a Mission Operations Engineer III to scale operations for multi-manifested missions to lunar locations. You will own the ground segment architecture and develop Flight Operations Products (procedures, scripts, and processes) enabling lunar landing.

You will bridge spacecraft subsystems and real-time execution, leading the mission from planning through testing and simulations, driving cross-team coordination and long-term operations planning.