Flight Dynamics Engineer

Work Model

This is a full‑time position based in ElSegundo, CA, Albuquerque, NM, Colorado Springs, CO, Chantilly, VA or Huntsville, AL. It offers an in‑person work model that combines four or more regular onsite workdays per week with remote flexibility as business needs allow.

• Provide primary support for hypersonics, missiles, interceptors, and reentry vehicle trajectory design and optimization.
• Conduct cislunar and exploration‑class orbital mechanics analysis and trajectory optimization.
• Analyze time‑dependent traveling salesman problems and facility location problem.
• Perform astrodynamics and orbital mechanics analysis, including orbit propagation and maneuver design/optimization for orbit transfer, station keeping, graveyard, disposal, and reentry events.
• Analyze vehicles with chemical and/or electric propulsion.
• Evaluate contested mission applications for space systems to understand threat performance, assess vulnerabilities, and improve system resiliency.
• Develop concepts of operations (CONOPS), explore tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and incorporate operational constraints into the design and maturation of space and near‑space systems.
• Provide operational support for nominal launch and spacecraft deployment and transfer sequences, anomaly resolution, and on‑call emerging events.
• Utilize optimal control, flight mechanics, and computer science/algorithm development skills to create new capabilities that serve customer requests as stand‑alone services or ready‑to‑integrate submodules.
• Perform research and development and build new flight dynamics tools to cultivate and maintain a modern internal tool base.
• Leverage external tools such as ASSET, GPOPS‑II, SNOPT, POST, OTIS, Copernicus, GMAT, EMTG, etc., to augment internally developed capabilities.
• Collaborate with other departments on mentor and orbit design, selection, and optimization for missions supporting rendezvous and proximity operations with complex operational constraints.
• Collaborate on trajectory design and optimization for launch vehicles and spacecraft for missions operating in LEO, MEO, HEO, GEO, and other earth‑centric regimes.

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited program in Engineering, Science, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline.
• At least two years of relevant professional, technical work experience.
• Experience in one or more of: space mission analysis and design, advanced astrodynamics, algorithm design, software development, mathematical modeling, multi‑objective optimization, trajectory simulation, and performance optimization of spacecraft, missiles, and reentry vehicles.
• Proficiency with one or more programming languages/tools: C, C++, Python, Fortran, MATLAB.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills.
• Willingness to travel domestically to customer and contractor facilities (≈10%).
• Ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance issued by the U.S. government; U.S. citizenship required.

• Five or more years of relevant technical work experience.
• Demonstrated technical excellence in the relevant job capabilities and functions.
• Ability to operate independently in the presence of ambiguity and deliver high quality end products to a range of customers.

• Graduate degree and/or research or professional experience in engineering, mathematics, physics, computer science, or a related field.
• Experience using or building analysis software that combines numerical methods, orbital or flight mechanics, and optimization for launch vehicles, missiles, interceptors, spacecraft, or reentry vehicles.
• Experience with nonlinear programming, direct methods, gradient‑based optimization, parameter optimization, genetic algorithms, evolutionary algorithms, heuristic optimization methods, indirect methods, and/or calculus of variations.
• Advanced algorithm development skills, including parallel processing and scripting experience.
• Experience with contested space trajectory applications, military exercises, and wargaming events.
• Ability to build and…