Principal GNC Engineer I

CesiumAstro•Westminster, CO

23h

About The Position

At CesiumAstro, we are developers and pioneers of out-of-the-box communication systems for satellites, UAVs, launch vehicles, and other space and airborne platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and cross-functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands-on, interactive, and autonomous work, CesiumAstro is the place for you. We are actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward-thinking individuals to join our team. We are looking to add an experienced Principal GNC Engineer I to our team. If you are great at what you do, enjoy working in a startup environment, and are passionate about developing GNC systems for leading-edge spacecraft, and aerospace communication systems, we would like to hear from you. In this position, you will draw on your experience on previous spacecraft to operate on a small team in the design and analysis of GNC systems for CesiumAstro satellites and payloads. You will be responsible for Guidance, Navigation, and Control through all stages of design, integration, test, and operations. As such, you will perform trade studies, lead design reviews, create models, and complete simulations and system testing. You will build, test, and fly hardware and software. As a CesiumAstro spacecraft team member, you will work on a small team to develop satellites and put them in orbit. Your work will have a direct impact on the success of the company. You will work closely with the engineering team, program management to ensure the successful build and launch of our satellite. Element will be the largest, most powerful rideshare satellite in LEO. Weâre launching eight of them in the next four years, starting with our first launch this year. Together, our small team will design, build, and iterate to reduce mass and cost while increasing performance, reliability, and manufacturability of a new generation of satellites. Letâs build!

Requirements

Master of Science (MS), or Doctorate (Ph.D.) degree in Aerospace Engineering from an accredited university or institution
Minimum of 9 years of industry experience in satellite attitude and orbit systems
Deep expertise in spacecraft attitude estimation, guidance, and control, including nonlinear state estimation theory and implementation (e.g., Extended Kalman Filters (EKF), Multiplicative EKF (MEKF), Unscented Kalman Filters (UKF), or other nonlinear observers); coordinate frame transformations; linear algebra; and nonlinear systems
Experience with multiple spaceflight missions from concept to operations
Experience in low earth orbit satellites
Experience with post-CDR test failures and on-orbit failures that guide your design and test philosophies
Experience with successful and unsuccessful recovery from on-orbit failures
Experience in conceptualization, architecture design, requirements specification, design, test, and operations of various GNC architectures and components
Familiarity with space mission simulation tools such as STK, Basilisk, GMAT, or FreeFlyer
Experience defining spacecraft trajectories and orbital requirements
Fluency with Python and C++, or other modeling languages
Familiarity with spacecraft mission design including events, pointing modes, maneuver planning, and operations
Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Nice To Haves

Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, tuning, and validating flight-grade state estimators, including covariance propagation, bias estimation, sensor fusion (e.g., IMU, star tracker, GNSS, magnetometer), and Monte Carlo-based performance analysis
Experience performing observability analysis, estimator consistency analysis (e.g., NEES/NIS), and robustness evaluation under sensor degradation or fault conditions
Experience architecting end-to-end ADCS estimation pipelines, including fault detection, measurement rejection, mode-dependent filter configurations, and on-orbit estimator anomaly resolution
CubeSat and SmallSat experience
Hands-on experience with spacecraft instrumentation, subsystems, and test labs
Experience with multiple mission simulation and flight architectures which drives your vision for the next generation of space software
Experience in LEO, MEO, GEO, and deep space satellites
Experience with communications satellites

Responsibilities

Guidance, Navigation, and Control through all stages of design, integration, test, and operations
Perform trade studies
Lead design reviews
Create models
Complete simulations and system testing
Build, test, and fly hardware and software
Work closely with the engineering team, program management to ensure the successful build and launch of our satellite