Mission Lead Systems Engineer

Staff Mission Lead Systems Engineer

Washington D.C. or Northern VA or Denver area

Muon seeks a Staff Mission Lead Systems Engineer to join our Mission Execution team. At Muon, we are developing multiple missions to help understand and act on Earth and climate intelligence. As a Staff Mission Lead Systems Engineer, you will partner with our Mission Architecture team during early mission formulation and study phases — shaping the technical concept, driving architecture trades, and developing the requirements baseline for prospective Muon missions.

When a mission you helped formulate is selected for implementation, you will become the Mission Lead Systems Engineer (MLSE), owning end-to-end technical success from concept through on-orbit operations for our most demanding missions. This role is pivotal as we scale our engineering rigor to meet the exacting standards of any customer requiring high-reliability systems, including those in the U.S. Government (USG), Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and select commercial sectors.

In this role you will have a "big-picture" view of mission execution, spanning the full lifecycle of mission design — from initial formulation with the Business Development team, through execution with the space vehicle hardware and software teams, to on-orbit validation and mission performance monitoring with the Operations team. You will be the primary technical interface with customers and cross-functional team leads to develop requirements and ICDs, work with other Systems Engineers to perform system modeling, develop test plans with AI&T teams, and identify and reduce risk across the program with Program Managers.

Muon is a lean and agile team, so keys to success in this role are your ability to "right-size" analysis and processes for differing levels of system maturity and risk, your flexibility to work with changing demands and schedules, and your effective communication of technical content to a diverse audience.

This position can be performed remotely from an approved location.

• Partner with the Mission Architecture team during study efforts to develop mission concepts, run architecture trade studies, and shape technical baselines for prospective missions and proposal responses.
• Develop and maintain mission-level system models, including architecture, requirements, interfaces, and behavior models — carrying these artifacts forward from the study phase into implementation as the authoritative technical baseline.
• Serve as the ultimate technical authority for your designated mission, leading the conceptualization, design, and development of the mission. Drive critical cross-functional technical trades and decisions to ensure mission success.
• Lead the tailoring and implementation of the Muon mission design process for your designated mission, ensuring alignment with program needs, while contributing to process refinement across all missions.
• Own the translation of customer objectives and stakeholder needs into clear, verifiable, and actionable technical requirements for your designated mission.
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for your designated mission, interfacing with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders on all technical matters.
• Manage requirements traceability, verification, and validation.
• Define mission CONOPS and manage subsystem budgets (e.g., power, data, mass, pointing/stability).
• Identify and mitigate internal and external mission risks, communicating impacts effectively.
• Assess and coordinate design changes across disciplines throughout the program lifecycle.
• Lead design, test readiness, and flight readiness reviews.
• Monitor on-orbit spacecraft and data pipelines to ensure mission success and that customer requirements are met.
• Foster deep collaboration with and provide technical direction to systems, hardware, software, data, ground segment, and operations teams for your designated mission, and support these interactions across other missions.
• Effectively serve as the Mission Lead Systems Engineer for one mission while contributing general systems engineering expertise and support to other…