GNC Engineer - Navigation Sensors and Algorithms (Spacecraft)

Location: Los Angeles, CA, United States

Base salary: $110,000–$200,000 per year plus equity.

Company

hirify.global develops high-power satellite platforms for missions from LEO to deep space and is scaling production for commercial and US government customers.

What you will do

• Own the spacecraft navigation and sensing chain from physical sensor hardware through estimation algorithms and flight software.
• Design, implement, and verify orbit and attitude estimation algorithms, including EKF, MEKF, UKF, batch estimators, and sensor fusion.
• Develop high-altitude GNSS navigation for MEO and GEO, including weak-signal and sidelobe tracking, receiver selection, link-budget testing, and onboard orbit filtering.
• Improve timing accuracy, latency, and jitter from sensor output through GNC ingestion; develop sensor calibration for ground and on-orbit use.
• Select and integrate GNSS receivers, IMUs, magnetometers, and star trackers in fault-tolerant architectures, and bring simulation prototypes into production flight software.
• Support acceptance testing, on-orbit commissioning, navigation performance analysis, mission operations, and GNC team hiring and mentoring.

Requirements

• Master’s degree or higher in aerospace, electrical, or mechanical engineering, physics, or a related field.
• 2+ years of experience in spacecraft navigation, estimation, or sensor engineering.
• Strong understanding of estimation theory and hands-on experience implementing filters for real-time systems.
• Hands-on experience with navigation hardware in a laboratory.
• Experience using Python, Julia, C/C++, or Rust for algorithm development, implementation, hardware testing, and simulation.
• Ability to define pass/fail performance criteria for GNC hardware and investigate out-of-specification hardware.
• The role involves access to ITAR-controlled information and requires U.S. person status or eligibility for a federally issued export-control license.

Nice to have

• Early-stage spacecraft conceptual design or clean-sheet design experience.
• High-altitude or cislunar GNSS architecture experience and knowledge of GNSS link budgets and antenna-pattern modeling.
• Experience with optics, star trackers, cameras, optical navigation, inertial-sensor Allan variance and PSD analysis, or magnetometer calibration and bias compensation.
• Hands-on experience with GNSS simulators, attenuators, LNAs, spectrum analyzers, vehicle-level polarity testing, and run-for-record testing.
• Basic power electronics, serial protocols, Ethernet, avionics radiation effects, FDIR strategies, and environmental testing such as SMC-S-016 or HALT/HASS.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment at a high-growth, Series D-funded aerospace company.
• Comprehensive benefits including paid time off, medical, dental, and vision coverage, life insurance, and paid parental leave.
• Equity in the company.
• Non-traditional career backgrounds are encouraged, and reasonable accommodations are available for applications and interviews.