Guide a vehicle from orbit to a precise landing, and build the GNC stack that gets it licensed to fly.
**About the role**
You'll be our founding GNC engineer and the person responsible for getting our vehicle from orbit to a precise, repeatable landing. This is a founding role. You'll own guidance, navigation, and control across the full reentry, from deorbit burn through terminal descent, and build our GNC tooling in-house on top of NASA GMAT.
At our stage, this means you're writing the algorithms and owning the regulatory path to fly them. You'll work directly with both founders on a daily basis. Both founders are ex-Astranis. Andrew led the avionics team, Payton was chief engineer on their next-gen satellite line.
**Responsibilities**
• Design guidance, navigation, and control for the full reentry and descent profile
• Build our in-house GNC and trajectory tools on top of NASA GMAT
• Develop deorbit targeting, entry guidance, and terminal descent control
• Model sensor and actuator behavior and close the loop in simulation
• Own the FAA licensing and regulatory interface for reentry operations
• Validate GNC performance against flight and ground test data
**Required qualifications**
• 2+ years in GNC on flight or flight-relevant programs
• Experience with reentry-vehicle guidance, navigation, and control
• Strong flight dynamics and control theory fundamentals, with implementation skills (Python, C/C++, or MATLAB)
• Comfortable working across disciplines at an early-stage company
• Must be a US person. US export control (ITAR/EAR) requires this.
**Nice to have**
• NASA GMAT experience
• Precision landing or entry guidance algorithm development
• Sensor fusion and state estimation (Kalman filtering)
• Prior work with the FAA on licensing or regulatory approval
Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
