Senior Optical Navigation Engineer (Lunar)

Location: Redondo Beach, United States; onsite

Salary: $210,000–$300,000 per year

Company

hirify.global develops spacecraft and lunar landing systems, with a focus on autonomous systems and spacecraft manufacturing.

What you will do

• Own onboard optical navigation algorithms and software for a lunar lander across development and operations.
• Design, implement, and tune navigation algorithms for low-lunar-orbit navigation, descent, and landing.
• Develop terrain-relative navigation software, including crater detection and matching, image comparison, and odometry.
• Perform orbit and attitude determination, covariance analysis, navigation error budgeting, and spacecraft navigation analyses.
• Develop sensor and measurement models in the 6DOF simulation environment and implement flight code in C++.
• Validate navigation performance through SIL/HIL integration, Monte Carlo analysis, verification data generation, and mission operations support.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Physics, or a related discipline.
• 8+ years of experience in spacecraft navigation, orbit determination, or estimation.
• Experience designing and implementing vision-based and spacecraft navigation systems.
• Demonstrated experience verifying, simulating, or testing navigation or perception systems.
• Proficiency in MATLAB and C++.
• Excellent technical communication skills.
• Applicants must be U.S. Persons or eligible to obtain an export license under applicable U.S. export regulations, including ITAR and EAR.

Nice to have

• 10+ years of experience in spacecraft navigation, orbit determination, or estimation.
• Experience with terrain-relative navigation, precision landing, hazard detection, landmark or crater localization, map-relative localization, or feature tracking.
• Experience with lunar or planetary map products, camera models, calibration, radiometry, or synthetic scene and image generation.
• Experience with OpNav HITLs and navigation or astrodynamics tools such as FreeFlyer, GMAT, or STK.
• Experience with powered descent, entry-descent-landing, rendezvous and proximity operations, or other deep-space missions.
• Experience in a startup or fast-paced, iterative hardware development environment.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast-paced, agile, iterative hardware development environment.
• Full-time employees may be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of stock options.
• Medical, vision, and dental coverage are available.
• Access to a 401(k) retirement plan.
• Base pay is determined by role, level, location, market data, qualifications, experience, capabilities, and internal equity.