Space Sr. Staff AI Safety Architect

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: Relocation assistance may be available

CLEARANCE TYPE: None

TRAVEL: Yes, 10% of the Time

Description

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman is seeking an engineer or researcher to lead the development of a safety framework for AI-driven Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) in space environments. This role involves building the policies, simulations, and constraint systems that ensure AI agents operate within safety bounds when planning and executing trajectories. The individual will work at the intersection of AI safety, control theory, orbital dynamics, and systems engineering to design fail-safes, guardrails, and interpretability tools that make AI behavior traceable, verifiable, and certifiably safe.

The qualified Senior Staff Systems Engineer will support National Security Space (NSS) Programs and Internal Research & Development (IRAD) projects in the Tactical Space Systems Division located in Dulles, VA. The job responsibilities will be as an individual-contributor and deliverable/product lead within a multi-disciplinary engineering team.

Duties/Responsibilities:

• Define and develop architectural safety frameworks for integrating AI into mission and safety-critical systems
• Lead safety assessments for AI-driven RPO
• Design and test verification strategies for non-deterministic AI behaviors
• Ensure system designs comply with relevant standards and emerging AI-specific guidance
• Define requirements for runtime assurance and fail-safe behavior for deployed AI
• Author supporting documentation that demonstrates AI behavior is traceable, verifiable, and certifiably safe
• The application of traditional systems engineering functions in the context of fault management, system autonomy.
• The candidate must be able to assist in the formulation of system design, definition of concept of operations, and systems analysis for failure modes and effects, including their identification and mitigation through autonomous or operational controls.
• Designing, implementing, and validating Fault Management and System Autonomy Flight Software using flight-like simulations and flight hardware.
• Must be knowledgeable in spacecraft subsystem design, spacecraft testing, flight software best practices, and mission operations.
• Candidate may be called on to assist in new business activities, such as conceptual design and analysis for proposals and funded studies and may include authoring sections for both.
• Presentation skills and the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to either technical or nontechnical audiences is required.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelors of Science degree in technical field + 14 years of experience, or Masters of Science degree in technical field + 12 years of experience, or PhD + 9 years of experience
• Experience in Systems Engineering for mission critical applications
• Mission and/or vehicle systems engineering experience
• Exp