Senior Mission Lead Systems Engineer (Space Systems)

Location: Hybrid in San Jose, California, with on-site work required three days per week. The position involves access to export-controlled information and requires eligibility under U.S. export regulations.

Salary: $190,000–$219,000 per year, plus equity and benefits.

Company

hirify.global designs, builds, and operates low Earth orbit satellite constellations and remote-sensing systems for climate monitoring and national security.

What you will do

• Act as the technical authority and Mission Lead Systems Engineer for a designated spacecraft mission from concept development through on-orbit operations.
• Translate customer objectives and stakeholder needs into clear, verifiable technical requirements, interface control documents, and mission concepts of operations.
• Lead cross-functional technical trades, system design changes, subsystem budgets, requirements traceability, verification, and validation.
• Coordinate systems, hardware, software, data, ground-segment, and operations teams while managing technical customer and partner interfaces.
• Lead design, test-readiness, and flight-readiness reviews; monitor spacecraft and data pipelines during on-orbit operations.
• Identify and mitigate mission risks and improve engineering processes, tools, and methodologies across multiple missions.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in engineering and 10+ years of experience in complex systems, mission architecture, or spacecraft design.
• Experience serving as a technical lead, such as Chief Engineer or Lead Systems Engineer, on a complex government or commercial system.
• Extensive experience with system modeling, systems analysis, simulations, system integration, and delivery of complex systems.
• Experience with formal requirements management for multidisciplinary projects and direct interaction with external customers.
• Strong project management, communication, presentation, coordination, and cross-disciplinary collaboration skills.
• Must be eligible to access export-controlled information under applicable U.S. Government regulations.

Nice to have

• Experience with major space programs, mission assurance standards, GNC requirements, or spacecraft Assembly, Integration, and Test processes.
• Experience supporting government proposal development and familiarity with electrical or software quality standards.
• Experience with remote-sensing instruments and associated data pipelines.
• Python or Julia skills and familiarity with version control and code review.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.

Culture & Benefits

• Lean, agile environment with flexibility to adapt processes to mission maturity, risk, schedules, and changing responsibilities.
• Full-time employment with equity compensation.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k), disability and life insurance.
• Three weeks of paid vacation, 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time, and paid parental leave.
• Focus on diverse, inclusive, and equal-opportunity employment.