Mission Design Engineer

Under the Deep Space Logistics Engineering Support (LENS) contract, our employees provide engineering support to NASA to review and assess activities of the Gateway Logistics Services (GLS) IDIQ Contract Commercial Service Provider. This effort includes the review and assessment of the requirements, design, analysis, testing, manufacturing, verification, validation, assembly, integration, checkout, mission preparations and operations required to deliver cargo and payloads to the lunar Gateway, or for other DSL mission projects and interests.
The Mission Design Engineer provides support on behalf of our customers to determine, negotiate and implement mission-enabling Mission Design requirements for the GLS systems and associated hardware. Additionally, this position will perform independent modeling and simulation tool development and analysis to support independent verification and validation (IV&V) of requirements and work closely with the mission design team.
This position will be filled at either the Senior Engineer or Subject Matter Expert level, depending on qualifications, with salary commensurate with experience.
Full time on-site position at Kennedy Space Center.
As a Mission Design Engineer you will:

• Assist with software development and scripting of NASA's trajectory optimization tools and related applications.
• Develop new features and algorithms requested by the NASA customer.
• Perform refactoring and improvements to the architecture for program efficiency.
• Perform Integration with other trajectory software and tools.
• General program maintenance and fixes.
• Ensure NASA requirements are satisfied by design solutions and support production/control board meetings, design, and system reviews.
• Regression testing and documentation.
• Provide trajectory products supporting spacecraft mission design & analysis for Deep Space Logistics and Gateway missions, and any other missions directed by the Deep Space Logistics Project office.
• Perform trajectory optimization runs to characterize vehicle performance and mission availability for a variety of scenarios.
• Development, integration and testing of new algorithms for evaluation of vehicle and mission performance.
• Mission scenarios include ascent, entry, precision landing, and Rendezvous Proximity Operations and Docking (RPOD).
• Travel as required in support of technical reviews and exchanges.
• Provide recommendations for program acceptance of requirements verification, testing, risks and hazards.
• Perform other duties as required.

Required Qualifications:

• BS degree in engineering from an accredited engineering school and 8 years of experience with spacecraft trajectory analysis or master's degree in engineering with 4 years of experience with spacecraft trajectory analysis.
• The candidate must have demonstrated capability to independently devise solutions to complex engineering problems by their own efforts and by soliciting inputs from other technical experts.
• Expertise in orbital mechanics and/or spacecraft mission design.
• Experience in programming and scripting languages such as modern Fortran, Python, and/or C++.
• Experience working in a team environment.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Must be a U.S. Citizen and successfully complete a U.S. government background investigation.

Preferred Qualifications:

• MS in Aerospace Engineering with a concentration in orbital mechanics and 5-10 years of spacecraft and cislunar trajectory design experience.
• Expertise in spacecraft trajectory optimization, including use of software tools such as Copernicus, GMAT, MONTE, STK, or FreeFlyer.
• Experience in spacecraft guidance, navigation, control algorithms and software.
• Experience with deep space NASA missions.
• Familiarity with NASA organizations, processes, and procedures including NASA System Engineering Standards such as the NASA System Engineering Handbook (NASA/SP-6105), NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR 7123), and NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Handbook (NPR 7120).
• Experience working with NASA launch services providers.
• Experience with NASA deep space mission systems engineering including coordinating system requirements verification and validation between multiple organizations and centers.
• Experience with human rated space flight.