Senior Systems Engineer (Satellite Ground Systems)

Location: Aurora, Colorado, United States, or Sterling, Virginia, United States

Salary: $160,000–$225,000 USD per year

Company

hirify.global delivers mission and technical expertise for national security, technology, and defense challenges.

What you will do

• Translate customer mission needs, CONOPS, and multi-segment interfaces into ICDs, operational sequence diagrams, data schemas, and verifiable requirements.
• Architect and govern behavioral and structural SysML models, maintaining consistency, bidirectional traceability to software user stories, and MBSE standards.
• Work with Agile Scrum teams to decompose epics into technical acceptance criteria and software backlogs aligned with mission objectives and interface constraints.
• Define and govern ground-to-space and ground-to-ground messaging schemas and protocols, including REST, HTTP, Protobuf/JSON, and publish-subscribe patterns.
• Lead verification and validation strategy, automated test-plan reviews, verification matrices, integration anomaly resolution, and formal requirements sell-off.
• Lead TEMs, ICWGs, ERBs, milestone reviews, and executive customer demonstrations.

Requirements

• Active or current TS/SCI clearance with polygraph is required.
• Bachelor’s degree in a STEM field with 15+ years of relevant engineering experience, or a master’s degree with 13+ years.
• Proven experience delivering space-ground architectures, Command and Control (C2), and mission management solutions from concept through operational handover.
• Expert proficiency building and managing behavioral and structural models using MBSE tools.
• Deep experience establishing interface protocols and data contracts for distributed software architectures, including RESTful APIs, event streaming, message brokers, and microservice data models.
• Experience applying systems engineering in scaled Agile/Scrum frameworks using Jira and Confluence for backlog decomposition and technical traceability.

Nice to have

• Experience integrating systems deployed in cloud-native, containerized environments using Kubernetes and Docker.
• Familiarity with automated integration test frameworks such as Playwright, PyTest, or automated API test suites.
• Experience modeling or evaluating space-vehicle subsystem interactions, including telemetry, commanding, orbit dynamics, and payload operations.
• Experience coordinating architecture across multi-vendor or geographically distributed engineering teams.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment supporting national security and defense missions.
• Health, dental, and vision coverage, including an HSA with company contribution.
• Paid time off, paid holidays, and paid parental leave.
• 401(k) with company match, financial wellness support, and family assistance.
• Training and development opportunities, award programs, and company-sponsored events.
• Work environment focused on employee well-being, professional growth, and work-life balance.