Chief Engineer, Space Vehicle Autonomy
Denver, COAll locationsDenver, COHuntsville, ALGreater Seattle AreaLos Angeles, CAReston, VA On-site
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About the role
As the Chief Engineer, Space Vehicle Autonomy , you will serve as the senior technical authority driving the architecture, design, and maturation of autonomous decision-making systems for our satellite platforms; systems that must not only act independently, but perceive and understand the orbital environment around them. You will bridge traditional deterministic autonomy engineering with modern AI/ML and computer vision techniques, weaving Space Domain Awareness (SDA) directly into the autonomy architecture so our spacecraft can sense, characterize, decide, and act on their surroundings in increasingly complex and contested space environments. This role calls for a leader who can drive software and AI/ML autonomy architecture while partnering closely with GN&C, perception, and systems engineering teams to optimize the overall system design. This is a technical leadership position — you will set the technical direction, adjudicate the hardest engineering trade-offs, and serve as the final technical authority on autonomy and SDA architecture across the program.
What you'll bring
- Bachelor of Science degree in an engineering-related field.
- Minimum of 20 years of advanced spacecraft design, development, or analysis experience.
- Demonstrated experience as a technical authority or chief engineer on complex spacecraft or autonomy programs.
- Deep understanding of traditional autonomy mechanisms (state machines, FDIR, rule-based logic) as well as AI/ML/CNN-based approaches to autonomy.
- Experience adjudicating complex technical trade-offs and leading Engineering/Failure Review Boards.
- Demonstrated understanding of national security space customer needs, CONOPS, and requirements for autonomous and SDA systems, including experience translating mission and policy constraints (e.g., human-on-the-loop/in-the-loop authority requirements) into engineering requirements and architecture.
- Direct experience with Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) and other autonomous mission architectures.
- Background in autonomy architecture development for satellites or other autonomous vehicles.
- Working knowledge of MLOps pipelines, including training data set curation, model training/retraining, and deployment for flight or safety-critical systems.
- Experience defining and executing SIL/HIL test campaigns for autonomy, GN&C, or flight software prior to flight integration, including establishing pass/fail criteria and managing the transition from simulation to hardware-representative environments.
- Experience collaborating closely with GN&C, perception, and systems engineering teams on a spacecraft autonomy or RPO program, with enough fluency in navigation and relative-navigation/estimation concepts to translate effectively between disciplines.
- Experience with perception stacks — sensor fusion, computer vision, LIDAR, and vision-based pose estimation.