Chief Program Engineer

Chief Program Engineer About Us

Black Sky is a real-time intelligence company. We own and operate the world's most advanced space-based intelligence platform and provide customers satellite imagery, automated analytics and high-frequency monitoring of strategic locations, economic assets and events from around the globe. Black Sky is trusted by the most demanding allied military and intelligence organizations and commercial companies to deliver foresight into critical matters that affect national security and the economy.

Black Sky's data enables governments and businesses to see, understand and anticipate change as it happens, giving them the ultimate strategic advantage so they can act quickly. Our global team works with cutting-edge technology to make a difference around the world and prides itself on being people-first, customer-focused and fun.

• Design, develop and maintain Black Sky's ground segment architecture spanning ground subsystems (mission planning software, ground hardware infrastructure, image processing software, and computer vision algorithms):
  • Provide an architectural framework for end-to-end ground system development, maintenance, and enhancement efforts.
  • Communicate with internal and external groups to determine functional requirements and translate those requirements to engineering specifications for implementation within the Black Sky architecture.
  • Understand the interactions between systems, applications, and services within the architecture and evaluate the impact of changes or additions.
  • Ensure the accuracy and completeness of architecture documentation.
  • Work closely with developers, engineers, and the product team to develop road maps for system capabilities, align development plans, and ensure effective capability integration across space and ground subsystems.
• Conduct data analysis from complex space and ground systems, apply knowledge of statistics, software scripting, modeling and simulation, and advanced mathematics to recognize patterns, identify opportunities, and propose solutions to customer and business objectives and decisions.
  • Lead the evaluation, development, and recommendation of capabilities, products and requirements to provide cost-effective solutions that meet business, technology, and customer requirements.
• Collaborate with business managers and technical groups to address important customer issues and find innovative solutions to difficult problems.
• Other responsibilities as needed.

• Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field or equivalent experience.
• At least 15 years of relevant experience with five (5) years' experience in the remote sensing industry.
• Strong knowledge of satellite ground system architectures and design of satellite ground systems.
• Demonstrated experience defining and documenting system Concepts of Operations, functional requirements, and performance requirements.
• Must be a U.S.
  
  -born citizen.
• Experience architecting complex software systems.
• Able to decompose complex problems into pieces and components.
• Familiarity with Software Engineering best practices and process including agile development.
• Knowledge of software enterprise design patterns.
• Experience designing Software APIs, system integrations and Data Models.
• Familiarity with software life cycle from product concept through operations and maintenance and tool chains used to manage this process (JIRA, Git, etc.).
• Effective communication skills to represent architectural and engineering concepts and decisions across varied stakeholders including Engineering, Sales, Customers, Product Management.
• Experience developing Concepts of Operations and derived engineering requirements based on complex Customer and Mission requirements.

• Familiarity with the geospatial domain and systems that leverage GIS data, especially from satellite systems and remote sensing.
• Experience with component(s) of the ground segment for satellite systems including mission planning, ground stations, order management, image production, or AI/ML or analogous systems.
• Former software engineering and software architecture experience for production systems, especially Satellite or product based SAAS.
• Master's degree in engineering.
• Experience with geographic information systems (GIS) applications to create, edit, and analyze geospatial data.
• Experience with Cloud-based computing architectures and virtual machine environments.
• Experience designing, developing, and evaluating predictive models and advanced algorithms that lead to optimal value extraction from the data.

• Medical, dental, vision, disability, group term life and AD&D, voluntary life and AD&D insurance
  • Black Sky pays 100% of employee-only premiums for medical, dental and vision and contributes $100/month for out-of-pocket expenses!
• 15 days of PTO, 11 Company holidays, four…