Sr. GNC Engineer (Spacecraft GNC)

Location: Onsite near Long Beach, California, or Denver, Colorado, United States

Salary: $140,000–$250,000 base salary per year, plus equity and benefits

Company

hirify.global develops autonomous spacecraft, advanced payloads, mission software, and space-based interceptors for space security and defense.

What you will do

• Own end-to-end development of spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control systems, from architecture and algorithm design through implementation, hardware integration, verification, and flight operations.
• Design, test, and validate GNC flight software for spacecraft operating in LEO, GEO, and cislunar environments.
• Develop attitude and orbit determination algorithms, sensor fusion, state estimation, covariance analysis, and EKF, UKF, and batch filtering methods.
• Design control laws for attitude control, orbit control, maneuver execution, and closed-loop guidance.
• Build high-fidelity 6-DOF simulations, sensor and actuator models, disturbance environments, Monte Carlo pipelines, and SIL/HIL integrations.
• Support hardware trade studies, design reviews, on-orbit commissioning, maneuver planning, fault investigation, and anomaly resolution while mentoring junior engineers.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, or a related discipline; an advanced degree is preferred.
• 8+ years of hands-on experience developing and fielding spacecraft GNC systems.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python for software development, numerical methods, and algorithm implementation.
• Deep knowledge of spacecraft attitude dynamics, orbital mechanics, environmental perturbations, actuator and sensor physics, estimation, filtering, control analysis, and navigation performance.
• Experience integrating GNC algorithms with flight hardware, defining subsystem requirements and verification plans, and participating in formal design reviews.
• Must be a U.S. citizen and eligible for DoD Secret or TS/SCI clearance; must meet U.S. space technology export-control requirements.

Nice to have

• Experience with proximity operations, formation flying, optical navigation, autonomous maneuvering, or precision pointing missions.
• Expertise in GNC-related FDIR, autonomous guidance, or onboard trajectory optimization.
• Familiarity with safety-critical or fault-tolerant flight software, real-time operating systems, embedded software, and hardware-in-the-loop testbeds.
• Technical leadership experience or ownership of major subsystem and full GNC solution architecture.

Culture & Benefits

• Equity package alongside base salary.
• Health, dental, vision, HRA/HSA options, PTO, and paid holidays.
• 401(k) and parental leave.
• Collaborative work across avionics, software, propulsion, mechanisms, mission operations, and systems engineering.