Director, Mission Engineering & Management

Location: Long Beach, California, United States; onsite. The role requires access to U.S. export-controlled information, so the successful candidate must be a U.S. person or otherwise eligible for deemed export licensing.

Salary: $188,600–$267,720 USD per year.

Company

hirify.global develops next-generation commercial space stations and spacecraft to support human presence in space, microgravity research, manufacturing, and the emerging space economy.

What you will do

• Own program and mission execution for a constellation-ready 15kW spacecraft bus and its initial 10-satellite demonstration mission.
• Maintain the integrated master schedule, critical path, milestones, risks, action items, and design-review close-out.
• Own system-level requirements, interfaces, and closure of mass, power, data, and link budgets against mission and customer requirements.
• Manage payload requirements, ICD negotiations, customer relationships, satellite manifests, build order, and configuration tracking.
• Negotiate launch contracts, manage the launch vehicle provider relationship, and coordinate launch-site logistics, range compliance, shipping, and stacking.
• Plan facility readiness across engineering offices, laboratories, manufacturing, clean rooms, environmental testing, and integration areas.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, mechanical, or electrical engineering, physics, or a related technical discipline.
• 8+ years of engineering experience in aerospace or defense and 3+ years of leadership in program management, mission engineering, or systems engineering.
• Experience delivering satellites or other complex hardware programs, including schedule, cost, customer management, requirements, budgets, and interfaces.
• Experience managing multi-unit builds such as constellations, batch production, or similar programs.
• Experience managing customer and launch vehicle provider relationships.
• Must be a U.S. person or otherwise eligible for deemed export licensing, including the required U.S. export-control status.

Nice to have

• Ability to obtain a security clearance.
• Launch campaign experience with any launch provider.
• Payload accommodation and ICD negotiation experience across multiple customer types.
• Launch-site facility operations experience.
• Spectrum licensing and regulatory coordination experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time exempt employment with company equity.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents.
• Paid time off, parental leave, disability insurance, life insurance, and access to a 401(k) plan.
• ClassPass credits, personalized mental healthcare, and other discounts.
• Onsite food perks including snacks, coffee, drinks, dinner meals, and subsidized lunch.