Senior Guidance Navigation & Control Engineer (GNC IPT Lead) (Clearance Required)

Do you have an eye for detail and a passion for developing innovation solutions? Join our team! As a Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer, you will be using your skills and expertise to design and test algorithms, flight software, related hardware, design tools, simulations, and more for various aerospace vehicles. These cover a very wide range from advanced mission payloads and electronic systems through highly integrated aircraft to orbital and space exploration systems. You'll explore complex GN&C algorithms and systems to assess performance of vehicle flight qualities and capabilities. Your technical duties involve the design, development, evaluation, and test of new products and processes throughout the product lifecycle.

Sierra Space-based in Louisville, CO with operations in Madison, WI, Durham, NC, Huntsville, AL, Houston, TX, and Kennedy Space Center, FL—designs and manufactures the Dream Chaser spaceplane and other advanced spacecraft, commercial space destinations, satellites, propulsion and environmental systems, spacecraft subsystems and components for the U.S. government (including NASA), commercial customers, and international organizations. Learn more about Sierra Space

Sierra Space’s Orbital Missions and Services (OMS) division focuses on the design, build, and operations of small satellites in support of commercial services and national security space and offers two work locations: Louisville, Colorado and Centennial, Colorado.

As a Senior Guidance, Navigation, and Control Engineer, you will be using your skills and expertise to design and analyze satellite hardware and software configurations, design and test GNC algorithms, build and test flight software, create and use design tools, build and analyze simulations, and more for various small satellite programs. Your technical duties involve the design, development, evaluation, and test of new products and software throughout the product lifecycle.

The design of configurations and algorithms stem from understanding, analyzing and evaluating satellite and constellation capabilities, mission concepts, and system requirements. Your work will ensure we meet customer requirements by making data-driven decisions in architecting, planning, building and testing the design in a testbed prototype and subsequent delivery of the end product. Along the way, you will build tools and contribute to analyses of various architectures that include space vehicles, satellites, sensors, communications, and ground infrastructure; evolving or creating new approaches based on analysis results. You will also contribute to evaluating the mission effectiveness of the candidate approaches, balancing mission objectives against factors such as development and lifecycle costs.

The successful candidate will have experience with at least most portions of the software life cycle (concept development, requirements definition, design, development, testing, and deployment). Additionally, the successful candidate will have experience doing GN&C-related analysis such as performance analysis, multi-sensor fusion and estimation/filtering, sensor processing and/or other advanced GN&C analyses. This individual has a strong working knowledge of Matlab and Simulink and experience with code development. Object-oriented design using the C and C++ languages is a plus, as is having experience in deploying and testing flight code on embedded processors. Experience with Agile Scrum is desired. Local area travel between Louisville and Centennial may be required.

Must-haves:

• Active TS/SCI US Government security clearance
• Bachelor's of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering or other related discipline and typically 10 or more years of relevant experience
• Relevant experience may substitute for degree
• Advanced knowledge of engineering principles and practices
• Demonstrated experience with Computer Aided Engineering tools, analysis and simulation
• Ability to work in multi-disciplinary design and development teams

Preferred:

• Experience leading GNC integrated product teams for space vehicle development
• Experience providing technical oversight of junior engineers
• Experience with system modeling tools, such as MATLAB/Simulink, STK
• Experience in RPO development and test
• Knowledge of the ramifications imposed on GNC design by RPO activities
• Experience with GNC analysis and simulation
• Experience with C/C++
• Experience with Python
• Experience with containerization and microservices
• Previous experience with navigation filters and fault detection algorithms
• Experience with related aerospace vehicles, sensor suites, and missions
• Exposure to ve