Principal Controls Engineering Architect (Spacecraft & Payload Systems)

Location: Seattle, WA; U.S. citizenship required and willingness to obtain a security clearance

Company

hirify.global develops laser-based systems for space, including spacecraft and optical payload systems.

What you will do

• Instrument hardware, collect sensor data, and build plant models in Simulink with mechanical engineering support.
• Run open- and closed-loop simulations for LOS jitter, coarse and fine pointing, handoff control, and spacecraft stability.
• Prototype controllers on Speedgoat, dSPACE, or similar rapid-prototyping targets and validate them against the physical plant before flight-code implementation.
• Define optical payload pointing requirements and write specifications for sensors and beam-steering hardware.
• Evaluate vendors against performance budgets, manage delivery, and size CPU, memory, I/O, and FPGA resources.
• Write proof-of-concept C/C++ or HDL, create porting guides, support design verification, and drive control-strategy trade studies across engineering and vendor teams.

Requirements

• Control-design experience from bench measurement through real-time prototyping to verified hardware performance on systems that shipped or flew.
• Simulink experience for plant modeling from measured data and hands-on experience with rapid-prototyping targets or similar platforms for closing loops on real hardware.
• Enough C/C++ or HDL experience to prove designs and size implementation resources.
• Clear technical writing across trade studies, porting guides, design rationale, interface specifications, and test reports.
• Ability to work across GNC, mechanical, opto-mechanical, FPGA, embedded, verification, and vendor teams.
• 10+ years of experience in spacecraft or high-precision payload control.
• MS or PhD in Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, or Systems Engineering preferred; exceptional equivalent industry experience considered.

Nice to have

• Direct experience with LOS jitter suppression or beam-steering control for optical payloads.
• Experience selecting and placing spaceflight sensors, including star trackers, IMUs, gyros, and accelerometers, and owning their performance consequences.
• Requirements that passed formal verification on a flight program.
• Experience hiring controls engineers and building a controls team.
• Flight-code experience.

Culture & Benefits

• First dedicated controls engineer in a principal-level, cross-disciplinary engineering team with flight heritage.
• Opportunity to establish the controls discipline and hire and lead future controls engineers.
• End-to-end ownership from plant measurement and controller design through flight implementation.