GNC Engineer Hawthorne, California Senior Level equity Posted View

Hawthorne, California (United States) Senior Level $150,000-$220,000 + equity Posted Sep 10 Full-Time

Who Are We?
A stealth-stage space technology pioneer is building one of the most ambitious platforms in clean energy: a constellation of orbital reflectors designed to beam sunlight back to Earth after dark. The goal is to solve one of solar power’s biggest constraints: nighttime intermittency. By extending useful solar production beyond sunset, this team is attacking a massive energy infrastructure problem with spacecraft, optics, controls, and first-principles engineering.

The company has recently raised a major Series A from elite venture investors and is preparing for its first spacecraft launch in 2026. This is a rare chance to join before the architecture is fully locked, before the constellation is scaled, and while the foundational simulation, controls, avionics, and vehicle dynamics decisions are still being made.

Founded by veterans of world-class aerospace and billion-dollar technology organizations, the team is small, intense, and unusually selective. They are not looking for résumé polish alone. They are looking for outlier builders: people who have owned hard technical systems end to end, built things that actually worked, and demonstrated uncommon drive in any domain.

What’s in It for You?
Full-stack GNC ownership:
Own everything from vehicle dynamics modeling and orbital propagation to controller design, simulation infrastructure, flight software integration, and hardware validation.
Real spacecraft impact:
Your controllers will not live only in analysis decks. You will write software intended for flight-ready avionics and support prototype hardware on the path to orbit.
Category-defining technical challenge:
Help solve a novel controls problem: precisely placing reflected sunlight on the ground from space using a new type of orbital vehicle.
Early-stage equity upside:
Join at the Series A stage with meaningful equity participation before the first spacecraft launch and before the company scales its constellation.
High-caliber technical environment:
Work directly with elite aerospace, avionics, software, and hardware engineers in a small team where technical depth matters more than hierarchy.
Architecture-level influence:
Contribute to vehicle architecture, ADCS design, constellation performance, trajectory planning, attitude motion profiles, and service-level system decisions.
Strong benefits and relocation support:
Benefits include broad medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k), HSA/FSA access, commuter benefits, unlimited PTO with minimum annual use, daily lunches, and relocation assistance.

What Will You Do?

GNC Simulation & Vehicle Dynamics
Develop, own, and continuously improve a 6-DOF simulation environment for vehicle attitude, station-keeping, and orbital performance.
Build simulation infrastructure from scratch using strong engineering judgment and best practices.
Model vehicle-level dynamics, propagated orbital dynamics, attitude behavior, disturbance environments, and control system performance.
Use simulation results to guide ADCS design decisions, vehicle sizing, hardware requirements, and mission-level tradeoffs.

Controller Design & Flight Implementation
Design and implement attitude control, estimation, and vehicle-control algorithms for spacecraft hardware.
Write production-quality software yourself for controllers that will run on flight-ready avionics.
Support prototyping by implementing controllers on prototype hardware and validating performance against models.
Work closely with avionics engineers to deliver reliable, performant attitude determination and control.

Verification, Validation & Hardware Testing
Verify and validate GNC flight software in…