Senior Optical Beam-Pointing Controls Engineer

Telemetry Today LLC; Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 148,000 - 222,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity

PTO & sick leave

Parental leave

Learning stipend

Job summary

Relativity Space is seeking a Senior Controls Engineer within the Interplanetary Sciences Program to lead the optical beam pointing and control systems for a high-precision interplanetary mission. You will design algorithms that fuse sensor data and spacecraft attitude information to maintain stable optical links across vast distances.

The role requires end-to-end ownership of a mission-critical control system, interfacing with GNC, flight software, and spacecraft teams, and contributing to

Qualifications

• Undergraduate or graduate degree in a technical discipline with 3+ years of related experience.
• Strong background in control theory, state-space methods, and nonlinear control.
• Experience with spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control systems for launch vehicles, satellites, or aerospace applications.
• Experience developing sensor fusion and state estimation algorithms, including Kalman filtering.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and implementation of optical beam pointing and control algorithms for the 2028 Mars Orbiter mission.
• Develop control systems that integrate optical sensor measurements, gyroscopic data, and spacecraft attitude estimates to achieve precision beam pointing and tracking.
• Design and implement fast steering mirror control algorithms that reject spacecraft jitter and maintain optical link performance.
• Develop sensor fusion and state estimation algorithms that combine beacon position measurements with inertial sensing for robust pointing control.
• Define requirements, interfaces, and verification methods for optical beam pointing performance, including acquisition, tracking, and pointing stability metrics.
• Develop and maintain control system models, simulation environments, and analysis tools to predict and verify system performance.
• Work with flight software developers to define software requirements, architectures, and interfaces for control algorithm implementation.
• Support prototyping and ground testing of optical beam pointing systems, including hardware-in-the-loop testing and system-level verification.
• Serve as technical authority for optical beam pointing and control, collaborating across teams.
• Support flight operations during commissioning and on-orbit operations, including performance analysis and anomaly resolution.

Skills

Control systems

Sensor fusion

Kalman filtering

C++

Python

MATLAB/Simulink

Education

BS/MS/PhD in relevant engineering

Tools

MATLAB/Simulink

C++

Job description

Relativity Space is seeking a Senior Controls Engineer within the Interplanetary Sciences Program to lead the optical beam pointing and control systems for a high-precision interplanetary mission. You will design algorithms that fuse sensor data and spacecraft attitude information to maintain stable optical links across vast distances.

The role requires end-to-end ownership of a mission-critical control system, interfacing with GNC, flight software, and spacecraft teams, and contributing to