Senior Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Controls (GNC) Engineer

Location: On-site in El Segundo, California, United States.

Salary: $169,067–$216,031 per year, plus eligibility for long-term incentives in the form of stock options and/or long-term cash awards.

Company

hirify.global develops commercial space infrastructure, including in-orbit pharmaceutical processing payloads, reentry capsules, heat shields, and satellite buses, built, integrated, and tested in-house.

What you will do

• Own the full GNC development lifecycle from analysis and design through unit testing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, vehicle integration, flight testing, on-orbit operations, and reentry mission operations.
• Specify and size ADCS hardware, including reaction wheels, torque rods, IMU/GPS systems, and star trackers.
• Design and implement autonomous attitude control, collision avoidance, orbital rendezvous, burn-planning, atmospheric reentry, and maneuver-scheduling algorithms.
• Develop six-degree-of-freedom vehicle simulations and perform trajectory design, optimization, dispersion, and Monte Carlo analyses.
• Integrate and test GNC sensors, actuators, and software in hardware-in-the-loop environments and monitor on-orbit performance.
• Coordinate with spacecraft operators, third-party agencies, and the U.S. government while developing supporting ground tooling, documentation, and system analyses.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, mechanical, or electrical engineering, physics, or a related field.
• 5+ years of proven experience, or a PhD with 3+ years of relevant experience.
• Demonstrated experience designing, modeling, testing, and flying aerospace guidance, navigation, and control systems.
• Strong software and model development skills, particularly in C++ and Python.
• Understanding of orbital mechanics, modeling and simulation, and software development.
• Experience fitting first-principles models to test data or high-fidelity external simulations.
• Proven systems engineering and configuration management skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Must be a U.S. person authorized to work in the United States and permitted to access export-controlled technology without an export license.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree in engineering or physics.
• Spacecraft attitude determination and control system design experience.
• Experience with GMAT, POST2, or similar tools.
• Understanding of multi-body dynamics, flexible-body dynamics, gas dynamics, fluids, and thermodynamics.
• Experience developing and verifying physical models for control design, component sizing, and system performance evaluation.
• Experience supporting safety-critical flight tests or spacecraft.
• Ability to manage risk continuously and provide solutions using lean, state-of-the-art software development techniques.

Culture & Benefits

• On-site work at Varda’s El Segundo offices and production facility.
• Work involves vehicles, equipment, and materials built, integrated, and tested in-house.
• Long-term incentives may include stock options and/or long-term cash awards.
• Employment is subject to U.S. work authorization, export-control access requirements, and E-Verify.
• Varda is an equal opportunity employer committed to an inclusive, merit-based workplace.