Senior Legal & Contracts Manager (Aerospace)

Location: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; on-site

Company

Orbitworks is a United Arab Emirates space company building on hirify.global's heritage to mass-manufacture satellites and support physical and virtual missions to space.

What you will do

• Own the full contract lifecycle, including drafting, negotiation, execution, and amendments.
• Develop contract templates, playbooks, commercial standards, negotiation frameworks, and baseline positions.
• Lead negotiations for complex, high-value procurements such as satellite buses, subsystems, payloads, launch services, and ground station services.
• Structure and negotiate customer agreements for hardware and services while protecting intellectual property, liability positions, and delivery risk.
• Identify contractual risks and define mitigation strategies covering warranties, termination, export controls, liability allocation, and flow-down requirements.
• Partner with Engineering, Finance, Legal, Supply Chain, Sales, and Program Management to translate contract terms into operational outcomes.

Requirements

• 10+ years of contract management experience in the space industry or similarly complex technical industries.
• Experience negotiating large, custom, multi-million-dollar procurement and customer contracts.
• Strong understanding of satellite systems or related space technologies.
• Experience collaborating with engineering teams to define technical scope and specifications.
• Working knowledge of contract law principles and experience with international suppliers and customers, preferably in the United States and Europe.
• Strong communication, commercial judgment, and negotiation skills.

Nice to have

• Experience in space, aerospace, or deep-tech industries.
• Experience supporting Supply Chain in complex procurement environments.
• Experience in start-up or scaling environments.
• Confidence navigating ambiguity and balancing risk with speed.

Culture & Benefits

• Work in a technically driven space-manufacturing environment.
• Contribute to the development of a growing commercial space company in the United Arab Emirates.
• Support the mission of manufacturing tens of satellites annually from a 50,000-square-foot Abu Dhabi facility.
• Artificial intelligence tools may support parts of the hiring process, while final hiring decisions remain with human reviewers.