Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer

Socket.dev; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 135,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

Space Kinetic is seeking a Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer to ensure space vehicles can safely and reliably accomplish missions. You will identify mission risks, evaluate hazardous conditions, and develop fault-protection strategies across the full program lifecycle.

The role partners across engineering disciplines to influence architecture, verification planning, and mission decision-making for government space programs. Strong writing and analytical skills are essential.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, systems, electrical, mechanical, or related field.
• 3–7 years in spacecraft, launch vehicles, or safety-critical systems.
• Experience in system safety, reliability, or mission assurance.
• Knowledge of spacecraft subsystems and end-to-end operations.
• Experience in fault detection, isolation, recovery, or safing.
• Ability to develop and verify technical requirements.
• Strong writing, communication, and engineering judgment.

Responsibilities

• Lead spacecraft safety assessments and hazard analyses.
• Identify hazard causes and residual risks.
• Develop fault-protection concepts and recovery strategies.
• Coordinate fault-management across flight software and avionics.
• Translate safety objectives into verifiable requirements.
• Evaluate modes and autonomy logic for safety.
• Verify hazard controls through analysis, test, and fault injection.
• Maintain traceability across hazards, controls, and designs.

Skills

System safety

Fault management

Mission assurance

Spacecraft operations

Technical writing

Engineering judgment

Education

Aerospace engineering degree

Tools

SysML

Cameo

MagicDraw

DOORS

Jama

Job description

A New Paradigm For Space Operations.

Who We Are:

Space Kinetic is a dual use space technology startup building a completely new architecture for space operations – one that brings the advantages of proliferated drone technology (low-cost, operationally flexible, attainable, distributed) to space missions while reducing the ecosystem's reliance on consumable fuel. In a world where many companies are focused on incrementally improving the status quo, we are focused on creating something entirely different – an architecture underpinned by new first principles to meet the opportunities and challenges of the third space age head-on. Our goal is to move away from one-to-one space architectures – where each satellite in a constellation has one (or a small # of) primary payloads attached to the bus -- and unlock a ‘one-to-many’ system, where each satellite has a large number of payloads which can be deployed from their host spacecraft at high velocities without firing a thruster.

This is not a role for someone looking for a traditional 40-hour work week. Space Kinetic is building ambitious, first-of-its-kind technology, and that requires urgency, ownership, and a high level of commitment to changing the foundational assumptions for everything we do in space.

What You’ll Do:

We are seeking a Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer to help ensure our space vehicles can safely and reliably accomplish their missions. You will identify mission risks, evaluate hazardous and off-nominal conditions, and develop effective fault-protection strategies across the full program lifecycle.

The Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer is responsible for partnering across engineering disciplines to influence spacecraft architecture, operational concepts, verification planning, and mission decision-making for government space programs

Job Responsibilities:

• Lead and support spacecraft system safety assessments, hazard analyses, fault tree analyses, failure modes and effects analyses, and other safety and risk analyses.
• Identify hazard causes, controls, verification methods, residual risks, single-point failures, common-cause failures, and cascading failures.
• Develop fault-protection concepts and requirements, including fault detection, isolation, containment, recovery, safing, and mission-recovery strategies.
• Evaluate spacecraft responses to off-nominal conditions and coordinate fault-management approaches across flight software, avionics, subsystem controllers, and mission operations.
• Translate safety and mission assurance objectives into clear, verifiable system and subsystem requirements.
• Evaluate spacecraft modes, autonomy logic, command paths, operational constraints, and architecture trades for safety and mission risk.
• Define and support verification of hazard controls and fault-protection requirements through analysis, test, simulation, and fault injection.
• Review requirements, designs, test plans, waivers, deviations, and anomaly dispositions for safety and mission assurance impacts.
• Support anomaly investigations, root cause analyses, corrective actions, design reviews, readiness reviews, and customer safety reviews.
• Maintain traceability between hazards, controls, requirements, design features, procedures, and verification evidence while integrating Quality Management System tracking with engineering design systems

What It Takes:

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, systems engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, or a related technical field.
• 3–7 years of relevant experience in spacecraft, launch vehicles, aerospace systems, autonomous systems, or other complex safety-critical systems.
• Experience in system safety, reliability, fault management, mission assurance, or spacecraft systems engineering.
• Working knowledge of spacecraft subsystem interactions and end-to-end space vehicle operations.
• Experience developing or assessing fault detection, isolation, recovery, safing, or fault-tolerant system behavior.
• Familiarity with functional hazard assessments, fault tree analyses, failure modes and effects analyses, or similar risk-analysis methods.
• Experience developing, reviewing, or verifying technical requirements and resolving multidisciplinary technical issues.
• Strong technical writing, communication, and engineering judgment, including the ability to make risk-informed recommendations with incomplete or evolving information

What We’d Love:

• Experience with range safety and AFSPCMAN 91-710 requirements.
• Experience developing space-rating assessments and mitigation strategies for commercial off-the-shelf components.
• Experience with low Earth orbit radiation environments, associated failure modes, and mitigation strategies.
• Experience developing spacecraft-level fault management, autonomous safing, mode management, or mission-recovery architectures.
• Experience with fault injection, hardware-in-the-loop testing, Monte Carlo analysis, or integrated mission simulations.
• Familiarity with government space mission assurance and experience supporting NASA, the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, or other U.S. government space programs.
• Experience with MBSE and requirements-management tools such as Cameo, MagicDraw, SysML, DOORS, or Jama.
• Active or previously held U.S. government security clearance.

ITAR Requirements:

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about ITAR here.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

Space Kinetic provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.

The annual base salary for this role is below. Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data. Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education/experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.

Pay Range

$135,000 — $165,000 USD