Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer

Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer

A New Paradigm For Space Operations.

Who We Are:

Space Kinetic is a dual use space technology startup building a completely new architecture for space operations – one that brings the advantages of proliferated drone technology (low-cost, operationally flexible, attainable, distributed) to space missions while reducing the ecosystem's reliance on consumable fuel. In a world where many companies are focused on incrementally improving the status quo, we are focused on creating something entirely different – an architecture underpinned by new first principles to meet the opportunities and challenges of the third space age head-on.

Our goal is to move away from one-to-one space architectures – where each satellite in a constellation has one (or a small # of) primary payloads attached to the bus -- and unlock a ‘one-to-many’ system, where each satellite has a large number of payloads which can be deployed from their host spacecraft at high velocities without firing a thruster.

This is not a role for someone looking for a traditional 40-hour work week. Space Kinetic is building ambitious, first-of-its-kind technology, and that requires urgency, ownership, and a high level of commitment to changing the foundational assumptions for everything we do in space.

What You’ll Do:

We are seeking a Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer to help ensure our space vehicles can safely and reliably accomplish their missions. You will identify mission risks, evaluate hazardous and off-nominal conditions, and develop effective fault-protection strategies across the full program lifecycle.

The Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer is responsible for partnering across engineering disciplines to influence spacecraft architecture, operational concepts, verification planning, and mission decision-making for government space programs

Job Responsibilities:

• Lead and support spacecraft system safety assessments, hazard analyses, fault tree analyses, failure modes and effects analyses, and other safety and risk analyses.
• Identify hazard causes, controls, verification methods, residual risks, single-point failures, common-cause failures, and cascading failures.
• Develop fault-protection concepts and requirements, including fault detection, isolation, containment, recovery, safing, and mission-recovery strategies.
• Evaluate spacecraft responses to off-nominal conditions and coordinate fault-management approaches across flight software, avionics, subsystem controllers, and mission operations.
• Translate safety and mission assurance objectives into clear, verifiable system and subsystem requirements.
• Evaluate spacecraft modes, autonomy logic, command paths, operational constraints, and architecture trades for safety and mission risk.
• Define and support verification of hazard controls and fault-protection requirements through analysis, test, simulation, and fault injection.
• Review requirements, designs, test plans, waivers, deviations, and anomaly dispositions for safety and mission assurance impacts.
• Support anomaly investigations, root cause analyses, corrective actions, design reviews, readiness reviews, and customer safety reviews.
• Maintain traceability between hazards, controls, requirements, design features, procedures, and verification evidence while integrating Quality Management System tracking with engineering design systems

What It Takes:

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, systems engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, or a related technical field.
• 3–7 years of relevant experience in spacecraft, launch vehicles, aerospace systems, autonomous systems, or other complex safety-critical systems.
• Experience in system safety, reliability, fault management, mission assurance, or spacecraft systems engineering.
• Working knowledge of spacecraft subsystem interactions and end-to-end space vehicle operations.
• Experience developing or assessing fault detection, isolation, recovery, safing, or fault-tolerant system behavior.
• Familiarity with functional hazard assessments, fault tree analyses, failure modes and effects…