Mission Design Lead - Flight Dynamics

Mission Design Lead

Seattle area, WA. Onsite.

A heavily funded NewSpace company with a launch vehicle already in build is now setting up a new group to tackle what comes after launch: spacecraft and on-orbit mobility, return to Earth, and the platforms that put mass to work in orbit. The group is small by design and plans on a 3 to 10 year horizon.

This is a founding lead role with a direct line to the head of the group. You’ll own mission design for everything the group builds. That means answering two questions: given a spacecraft, what missions can it fly, and given a mission, what spacecraft does it take. Your answers decide what gets built.

What you will be doing

• Design, optimize and compare trajectories across LEO, MEO, GEO, cislunar and lunar
• Turn missions into delta-v budgets and propellant and timeline trades across chemical, electric and multi-mode propulsion
• Give the rest of the group what it needs from your trajectories: thermal and radiation environments, aerothermal loads, eclipse and power profiles, and comms geometry
• Build and own the group’s trajectory and mission analysis tooling, mixing your own code with packages like GMAT, Copernicus, FreeFlyer, STK or POST2
• Set GNC and flight dynamics requirements, and check the flight system meets them, whether it’s built in-house or by a partner
• Own flight safety, conjunction assessment and regulatory analysis for maneuvering missions
• Grow the mission design team as the products mature

What you will bring

• A Master’s or PhD in aerospace, astrodynamics, applied math or a related field, or equivalent experience
• 8+ years in mission design or flight dynamics, including at least one flown mission as mission design or flight dynamics lead
• Deep orbital mechanics and trajectory optimization from LEO to cislunar, including low-thrust and multi-burn problems
• You write your own tools in Python, MATLAB, C++ or similar, and you know at least one industry package
• A working grasp of how trajectory choices drive thermal, power, radiation and aerothermal environments, plus GNC and navigation fundamentals
• The ability to make fast, well-reasoned trades with incomplete information
• Bonus points for GEO, cislunar or lunar transfer and landing, refueling and servicing, aerobraking or EDL, electric propulsion, RPO, GNC or flight software, or national security space mission planning

Why join

• It’s a lead seat, so your mission design shapes the products instead of just analyzing them
• You’ll work across every mission class and orbit regime, not one program
• You’ll report directly to the head of the group, alongside the systems architecture and propulsion leads
• The company is one of the best-funded in the sector

ITAR: This role is subject to US export control regulations. Applicants must be a US person as defined under ITAR.