Lead Engineer, Mission Planning

Lead Engineer, Mission Planning

About Us:

BlackSky is a real-time intelligence company. We own and operate the world's most advanced space-based intelligence platform and provide customers satellite imagery, automated analytics and high-frequency monitoring of strategic locations, economic assets and events from around the globe. BlackSky is trusted by the most demanding allied military and intelligence organizations and commercial companies to deliver foresight into critical matters that affect national security and the economy. BlackSky's data enables governments and businesses to see, understand and anticipate change as it happens, giving them the ultimate strategic advantage so they can act quickly. Our global team works with cutting-edge technology to make a difference around the world and prides itself on being people-first, customer-focused and fun.

The Mission Planning Engineering Team at BlackSky is responsible for the core algorithms and models used to optimize satellite image collection while respecting hardware and software constraints inherent in the system. As the Lead Mission Planning Engineer, you will be responsible for authoring new requirements, models and algorithms while leading other Mission Planning engineers in feature design and supervising the introduction of new Mission Planning features commensurate with Customer needs and Business imperatives. This includes design considerations for Customer tasking requests, satellite power, communications and data handling, and satellite agility to maximize Constellation performance. The Lead Engineer will run a dedicated Integrated Product Team (IPT) of cross-functional engineers and software developers to ensure on-time and in-scope delivery of required planning features.

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in software requirements definition, project management, software architecture, and planning/optimization algorithms. This role offers a clear path toward functional management for candidates who demonstrate strong technical leadership, communication skills, and a strategic mindset. As the role evolves, there will be opportunities to take on expanded responsibilities, including providing functional leadership over Mission Planning engineers, supporting technical mentorship, leading annual reviews, and guiding professional development.

While the locations listed in the job posting are ideal, we would love candidates near either our Herndon, VA or Seattle, WA offices. We may also consider remote candidates in certain states.

Responsibilities:

• In coordination with the PMO and Systems Engineering team, write and manage Jira tickets to guide work efforts, deadlines and priorities.
• Engage in weekly team and 1:1 meetings as needed to ensure alignment on changes to priority or deadlines to Mission Planning imperatives.
• Engage stakeholders as the primary Mission Planning technical leader for technical impact and staffing needs for new feature requests. This will involve:
  • Learning the BlackSky Mission Planning and ground segment architecture through independent learning, team and cross-team training/interviews, stakeholder engagement and design participation.
  • Act as primary author or otherwise delegate and supervise authorship for new Mission Planning feature sets.
  • Lead kick-off meetings and cross-team IPTs in support of feature design, development and test.
  • Represent the Mission Planning team "up and out" - engaging frequently with Company Leadership, Systems Engineering, cross-team Leadership (Mission Management SW development Lead), Product and Sales on the state of Mission Planning features to resolve priority and resource conflicts.
• Manage directly or supervise technical documentation regarding Mission Planner design work, including requirements documentation (decomposition from business level imperatives or systems level requirements), Jira ticket progress and status (in coordination with the PMO), internal stakeholder design documentation (e.g. PowerPoint presentations or White Papers explaining the planning logic or changes needed to fulfil certain customer requirements or contractual obligations).
• Drive progress in Mission Planning Prototype development through strong, focused priorities and strong technical leadership to enable rapid transition from prototype to Production software requirements.
• Drive success criteria and testing to validate the utility and accuracy of prototype code before it becomes formal system requirements flowed to the Software development teams.
• Understand Customer needs, "nice-to-haves" and hard requirements to assist in decomposing those requirements into manageable scope, actionable inputs, and ticketed work for the Mission