GNC Engineer, ADCS (Starshield)

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars. GNC ENGINEER, ATTITUDE DETERMINATION AND CONTROL SYSTEM (STARSHIELD) Starshield leverages SpaceX’s Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts. While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads. As an engineer on this team, you will bring a passion and expertise in areas like spacecraft attitude dynamics and control, orbit and attitude navigation filtering, orbital mechanics, spacecraft systems design, and software development to support the Starshield Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) GNC team. There are several sub-teams within Starshield GNC with different focus areas. The ADCS team focuses on vehicle GNC software and hardware design, analysis, testing, and on-orbit operations, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all Starshield vehicles reliably and intelligently balance payload pointing needs, sensor availability, momentum management, thermal constraints, and power generation demand across the entire mission timeline. On any satellite, the ADCS is an extremely central and crucial subsystem that is key to mission success. In this role, you will be working on a high-impact team whose success is paramount to the long-term flourishing and continuous improvement of the entire Starshield program. Come help us write the software that flies Starshield satellites and enables mission success! RESPONSIBILITIES: Design and implementation of satellite GNC software that can facilitate all mission concepts of operations across all phases of flight, including off-nominal/contingency scenarios Design of concepts of operations (CONOPs) that intelligently balance thermal constraints, power budgets, momentum management, satellite-to-ground and satellite-to-satellite contact, and payload-pointing needs Design, development, and flight software implementation of onboard GNC algorithms to achieve a high level of vehicle autonomy and fault tolerance while providing adequate navigation and control performance Update and maintain GNC software configurations for a variety of minor satellite design revisions and mission sets High fidelity time domain 6DOF modeling and simulation of satellite dynamics, sensors, actuators, algorithms, and all of their interactions Monte Carlo simulation analysis to validate safe and reliable flight and quantify navigation and control performance Heavy involvement in integrated hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) testing efforts, including but not limited to test case design, data review automation, and modeling fidelity improvements Navigation filtering and control systems design and optimization Spacecraft design activities related to ADCS sensor and actuator hardware sizing and layout Develop, validate, and improve upon complex sensor, actuator, and dynamics models for use in 6DOF simulation analysis Maintain a robust and tight interface with other disciplines and subsystems (e.g. thermal, power, communications) to ensure a good and consistent system-level design BASIC QUALIFICATIONS: Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, computer science/software engineering, or an engineering discipline Software development experience in C++, Python, and/or MATLAB/Simulink PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE: Master's or PhD in aerospace engineering, computer science/software engineering, or an engineering discipline Basic familiarity with the GNC discipline and associated technical fundamentals Extremely strong technical fundamentals in the areas of spacecraft attitude and orbit dynamics, navigation filtering and/or control systems design Capable of identifying and solving compl