Spacecraft Systems Engineer III

Career Opportunities with Firefly Aerospace

Come be a part of the 21 st Century Space Race!

Firefly Aerospace is a space and defense technology company that enables our world to launch, land, and operate in space – anywhere, anytime. As the partner of choice for critical space missions, Firefly is the only commercial company to launch a satellite to orbit with 24-hour notice and the only company to achieve a successful Moon landing. Our launch vehicles, lunar landers, and orbital vehicles provide government and commercial customers with full mission services from low Earth orbit to the Moon and beyond.

Headquartered in north Austin, Texas, Firefly is looking for passionate, hardworking innovators to join our team and help fuel our successful trajectory into space.

We welcome you to join Firefly as a Spacecraft Systems Engineer, to leverage your creative and technical expertise for the development of Blue Ghost and Elytra spacecraft over the product lifecycle from concept through fabrication, test & flight. You will work with design engineering, manufacturing, integration, test and launch teams to ensure the production of a thoroughly tested, operationally efficient and reliable vehicle that meets system level requirements.

The Systems Engineering team is accountable for requirements, interfaces, and test planning - it will be your responsibility to validate the system architecture, manage technical budgets and design configuration between departments, develop test plans, ensure verification of requirements, and support mission operations. You will be expected to be able to speak knowledgeably about the current system configuration and provide status updates on performance, changes, schedule, and risks.

It will be your job to translate program plan and engineering team’s vision into system level success. A successful candidate will be a self-starter, elevate their teammates and be passionate about the space industry.

To deliver a robust, reliable, and economical product successfully completing all mission requirements by...

• Creating and maintain system-level designs, schematics, interface control documents and performance budgets including fluid, electrical, and software architectures.
  • e.g. ICDs, Con Ops, States & Modes, Sequence Diagrams, FBD, Boundary Diagrams, Grounding/Bonding Diagrams, Mass/Power/Link/dV/etc Budgets
• Owning requirements development/flowdown, subsystem interfaces, and vehicle level test plans. Reviewing all test plans for your vehicle.
• Leading system-level trades, design reviews, and data reviews for your vehicle.
  • Accountable for delivery of SRR, and PDR, responsible for providing critical inputs to CDR, MRR, TRR, and LRR.
• Being accountable for the resolution of any issue, failure, or NCR that impacts closure of your test plans. Includes root cause analysis and issuing of corrective actions.
• Facilitating the change control board, risk review board, deliverable tracking and effort estimates for your vehicle.
• Maintaining a strong rapport with the manufacturing and integration technicians, understanding their challenges and proposing upstream opportunities for improvement.
Traveling to support offsite testing.
• Serving as surge capacity for the operations team during demanding missions and supporting 12 hour shifts during lunar mission operations.
• Maintaining calm under pressure, and fostering a positive, professional, and respectful working environment.

• BS in Aerospace Engineering or related engineering discipline required
• 5+ years of focused hands-on experience in an interdisciplinary project management or execution role on spacecraft, equivalent work will be considered.
• Firm comprehension and demonstrated application of first principles in engineering disciplines (orbital mechanics, controls, mechanical, structural dynamics, electrical, mechatronics, materials, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and propulsion).
• Experience leading interdisciplinary project teams of including hardware and software engineers.
• Strong working knowledge of ASME, MIL, ASTM, and/or NASA Standards, as well as Systems Engineering best practices – able to adapt processes to…