Mission Design Engineer SME

Location: Kennedy Space Center area, Florida

Remote/Telework: Primarily on-site/in-office

Clearance/Background Screening: Must successfully complete a U.S. government background investigation

Citizenship Requirement: U.S. Citizen or lawful permanent resident (Green Card holder)

Work Schedule: Full-time

Compensation: $150,000–$175,000 annually, depending on experience and qualifications

Relocation Assistance: May be available

Aegis Aerospace is seeking a Mission Design Engineer – Subject Matter Expert (SME) to support advanced spaceflight programs and mission concept development in the Kennedy Space Center area. This position provides expertise in mission architecture, trajectory and orbit design, spacecraft performance, and mission feasibility analysis.

The selected candidate will independently evaluate mission concepts, destination orbits, launch and transfer opportunities, spacecraft performance margins, and delivered-mass capability. The SME will also review technical assumptions and analyses developed by partner organizations and collaborate with propulsion, guidance, navigation and control (GN&C), power, thermal, communications, payload, structures, and other engineering disciplines to support integrated mission decisions.

The candidate will:

• Perform mission design and architecture trade studies for lunar, cislunar, and other spaceflight missions.
• Develop and evaluate candidate trajectories, destination orbits, transfer strategies, launch opportunities, maneuver sequences, and mission timelines.
• Assess spacecraft and launch vehicle performance, including injection conditions, delta-V requirements, propellant consumption, delivered-mass capability, payload mass margins, and available launch performance.
• Evaluate mission concepts using appropriate performance margins, reserves, sensitivity studies, and uncertainty analyses to identify key drivers and technical risks.
• Perform trade studies addressing orbit selection, mission duration, spacecraft capability, propellant requirements, payload mass, operational complexity, and other mission constraints.
• Develop and execute independent trajectory and mission-analysis models to evaluate mission concepts and verify performance predictions.
• Review mission design analyses, models, assumptions, inputs, and results developed by partner organizations and identify gaps, sensitivities, limitations, and areas requiring additional analysis.
• Support analysis of rendezvous, proximity operations, docking, loiter, disposal, and other mission phases, as applicable.
• Collaborate across engineering disciplines to assess how subsystem capabilities and constraints affect overall mission feasibility, margins, and performance.
• Support the development and evaluation of mission-level requirements, constraints, verification approaches, and success criteria.
• Present mission trades, analysis results, performance margins, risks, and recommendations during technical reviews and decision forums.
• Develop or modify mission-analysis tools and scripts as needed to address new analysis problems efficiently.

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related engineering discipline with at least eight years of relevant professional experience; or a master’s degree in one of these disciplines with at least five years of directly relevant professional experience in mission design, astrodynamics, trajectory analysis, spacecraft performance analysis, or related spaceflight engineering.
• Demonstrated depth of mission-design expertise and the ability to independently perform mission analyses and technical trade studies. Experience will be evaluated based on the…