Senior Satellite Systems Engineer - Mission Modeling and Simulation

Amazon; Arlington (VA); On-site; USD 151,000 - 205,000; Full time

Job summary

KGS LLC seeks a Modeling and Simulation Systems Engineer to design and analyze government mission scenarios for satellite systems. You will translate objectives into CONOPS, run simulations, and evaluate coverage, latency, and capacity using MATLAB, C++, and Python while addressing RF and optical link budgets.

Applicants should have 8+ years in satellite design and demonstrated ability to present technical results to customers and reviews.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or an equivalent field.
• 8+ years of experience in satellite or network system design, modeling, and analysis.
• Strong understanding of orbital mechanics and constellation geometry, including modeling orbits, reference frames, and vector geometry to simulate the time-varying relative geometry of satellites and ground nodes.
• 8+ years of experience developing code in MATLAB, C, C++, or Python, including industry-standard coding and regression practices.
• Working knowledge of RF or optical link budgets and how link performance drives system capacity and availability.
• Experience with resource scheduling, allocation, or optimization for a communications or satellite system (e.g. contact scheduling, link or beam assignment).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including preparing and presenting technical content for customers and program reviews.

Responsibilities

• Own system-level modeling, simulation, and analysis for government mission scenarios and constellation designs, across coverage, capacity, latency, and availability, from concept trades through customer deliverables
• Perform mission engineering: translate customer mission objectives into scenarios and measures of effectiveness, develop design reference missions and CONOPS, and model whether the end-to-end system delivers the required operational outcome
• Apply orbital mechanics, including orbit and constellation geometry, reference frames, revisit and access behavior, and station-keeping and conjunction considerations, as the foundation of coverage, access, and contact analyses
• Design and evaluate resource scheduling and allocation approaches, heuristic or solver-based, for contact scheduling, satellite beam assignment, and prioritization under power, thermal, and spectrum constraints
• Evaluate complex multi-disciplinary trades involving RF bandwidth and network resource allocation to customers, optimizing customer experience against cost, power, and spectrum, including constellation design and link selection trades
• Build and/or utilize RF and optical link budgets and combine them with orbital constellation dynamics to model time-varying system capacity, latency, and availability
• Model inter-satellite geometry and access, including link availability windows, contact scheduling, and handover behavior
• Extend existing simulation code and tools, and create new simulation models representative of the target system (primarily MATLAB, also C++ / Python), designing around hardware and software capabilities and constraints to support a dynamic network topology
• Prepare and present technical content for government customers and program reviews, including analysis packages, visualizations, briefings, and proposal material
• Account for self-interference and interference with other space and terrestrial communication systems in coverage and capacity analyses

Skills

Orbital mechanics

MATLAB

C++

Python

System modeling

Communication skills

CONOPS development

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical/Aerospace/Manufacturing Engineering

Master's or PhD in Aerospace/Electrical/CS (preferred)

Tools

Git

Job description

KGS LLC seeks a Modeling and Simulation Systems Engineer to design and analyze government mission scenarios for satellite systems. You will translate objectives into CONOPS, run simulations, and evaluate coverage, latency, and capacity using MATLAB, C++, and Python while addressing RF and optical link budgets.

Applicants should have 8+ years in satellite design and demonstrated ability to present technical results to customers and reviews.