Orbit Determination and Navigation Engineer , II

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Full Time AZ, US

3 days ago Requisition

Orbit Determination/Navigation Engineer

Level I, II

About Intuitive Machines:

Intuitive Machines is an innovative and cutting-edge space company making cislunar space accessible to both public and private customers. Our mission is to further science and exploration, communications, and economic progress from the Earth to the Moon and beyond. With multiple NASA lunar missions in development and additional private missions on our manifest, we pride ourselves in supporting NASA, our customers, and the nation in paving the way to return humans to the surface of the Moon.

Our world-class team includes experts in all aspects of spacecraft subsystems design, development, and test, on-orbit operations, and safety.

KinetX Aerospace, a subsidiary of Intuitive Machines, is a trusted engineering services and product company specializing in space navigation, flight dynamics, mission operations, communications, and systems engineering. As the first private company qualified by NASA for deep-space navigation, KinetX has supported some of the world’s most complex planetary missions, including MESSENGER, New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx, Lucy, and LunaH-Map. With a proven record spanning Earth-orbiting, suborbital, commercial, international, and deep-space missions, KinetX provides end-to-end expertise from early mission design through flight operations.

Its core capabilities include navigation and mission systems development, optical navigation, orbit determination, maneuver design, trajectory optimization, and constellation design and maintenance. Combined with Intuitive Machines' spacecraft, network, and mission-operations capabilities, KinetX helps build, connect, and operate resilient space infrastructure for sustained exploration, advanced deep-space constellations, and communications networks.

About the Position:

We are seeking an Orbit Determination (OD) and Navigation Engineer at Level I (Associate) or Level II (Professional Engineer) to join the OD group within FDI. Level I engineers perform assigned work under guidance and established procedures. Level II engineers independently execute routine OD analyses and navigation products while developing specialized knowledge. Placement will reflect demonstrated competencies.

Responsibilities:

• Support daily OD solutions and trajectory reconstructions, covariance analyses, tracking data quality assessments, and evaluation of forces affecting spacecraft trajectories.
• Produce trajectory updates that support maneuver design, reference trajectories, and science observations.
• Assist with run setup, tracking data preparation, residual review, product generation, and basic analysis under guidance.
• Check inputs, units, coordinate frames, time systems, and outputs for accuracy and completeness.
• Support planning, effort estimates, feasibility studies, testing, and documentation.
• Follow directions and schedules, resolve basic issues, and ask for help when needed.
• Use established OD software and scripts, assist with simple updates and routine troubleshooting, and follow coding, configuration, documentation, and applicable quality practices.

Additional Level II responsibilities

• Independently execute routine OD analyses and generate navigation products using approved tools.
• Configure estimation runs, assess residuals and covariance outputs, and evaluate solution behavior.
• Plan assigned analyses, identify data and resource needs, estimate effort, assess risks, and coordinate schedules.
• Test more complex solutions and troubleshoot issues, seeking…