Mission Design Lead

At Stoke, we believe a thriving space economy will enable a vibrant, sustainable, and equitable future here on Earth. That is why we're building Nova, our fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle. Designed for daily flight, Nova tackles the core challenges of space transportation by reducing cost, increasing availability, and improving reliability. By radically lowering launch costs and increasing flight cadence, we're helping create a truly scalable space industry.

Our team is mission-driven, collaborative, and empowered to take ownership of their work. If you want to work alongside some of the most dedicated and talented people on Earth, we'd love to have you join us.

This is a new organization within Stoke, with a goal to develop products on a 3-10 year horizon that grow Stoke beyond launch. Nova moves mass to orbit. This group takes on what comes next: spacecraft and on-orbit mobility that move mass to any orbit, downmass that returns it to Earth, and the satellites, platforms and factories that put mass to work once it is there.

The organization is small by design, and everyone here carries a second hat.

As Mission Design Lead you own mission design for everything the new organization builds. You answer the two questions every product here starts with: given a spacecraft, what missions can it perform, and given a mission, what spacecraft does it take. You will design and compare trajectories across LEO, MEO, GEO, cislunar and lunar space, from orbital transfer and long-dwell to refueling logistics, constellation deployment and return to Earth, and turn them into delta-v budgets, propulsion sizing inputs, timelines and requirements for the group's products.

Your trajectories feed the rest of the analysis: thermal environments for propellant management, aerothermal loads for aerobraking and reentry, power and eclipse profiles, communication geometry. You will build and maintain the in-house trajectory and mission-analysis tools so that every product in the portfolio is evaluated on the same physics. You must be ready to stay focused, move fast, self-direct, and learn on the fly.

• Design, optimize and compare trajectories and mission profiles across LEO, MEO, GEO, cislunar and lunar regimes for the group's products.
• Map vehicle capability to mission capability and back: delta-v budgets, propellant and timeline trades across chemical, electric and multi-mode propulsion, and the mission-class definitions that drive vehicle requirements.
• Provide trajectory-derived inputs to other studies: thermal and radiation environments, aerothermal loads for atmospheric flight phases, eclipse and power profiles, ground-contact and communication geometry.
• Build and maintain the organization's trajectory and mission-analysis tooling (own code plus industry packages such as GMAT, Copernicus, Free Flyer, STK or POST2).
• Define GNC and flight-dynamics requirements that flow from the mission design, and verify the flight system, in-house or partner-provided, performs against them.
• Own flight-safety, conjunction-assessment and regulatory analysis for maneuvering missions.
• Help grow the mission design team as the products mature.
• Master's or PhD in aerospace engineering, astrodynamics, applied mathematics or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of mission design or flight dynamics experience, including at least one spacecraft mission flown as mission design or flight dynamics lead.
• Deep command of orbital mechanics and trajectory optimization across multiple regimes (LEO through cislunar), including low-thrust and multi-burn problems.
• Writes their own tools:
  Python, MATLAB, C++ or similar, plus at least one industry mission-design package.
• Working knowledge of how trajectory choices drive thermal, power, radiation and aerothermal environments, and of GNC and navigation fundamentals.
• Demonstrated ability to make rapid, well-reasoned trades with incomplete information.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to lead and to follow.

• Mission design for GEO, cislunar or lunar missions (transfer, capture, landing) or refueling and servicing logistics.
• Aerobraking, aerocapture, or entry, descent and landing trajectory design.
• Electric and multi-mode propulsion trajectory design.
• Rendezvous and proximity operations mission design.
• GNC architecture or flight software experience, for when the group brings that capability in-house.
• Experience building or leading a flight dynamics or…