Lead Engineer, Mission Planning

Summary

Join BlackSky's Mission Planning Engineering Team as a Lead Engineer, responsible for optimizing satellite image collection algorithms and models. Lead and supervise other engineers in designing and implementing new Mission Planning features, ensuring on-time delivery. Collaborate with cross-functional teams and stakeholders to meet customer needs and business objectives. Author requirements, models, and algorithms, and manage Jira tickets to track progress. The ideal candidate possesses strong software requirements definition, project management, and optimization algorithm skills. This role offers a clear path toward functional management with opportunities for expanded responsibilities, including technical mentorship and professional development. Remote work may be considered for candidates in certain states.

Requirements

• Bachelors or Master Degree in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering or equivalent. (Each additional degree (MS or PhD) may substitute for two years of experience)
• Minimum of eight years of relevant experience in aerospace, maritime, autonomous vehicle, drone or comparable planning/optimization problem space
• Strong demonstrable leadership in software requirements management, design and implementation
• Strong experience in developing software architecture
• Strong experience integrating new feature designs into an existing software architecture
• Deep expertise in one or more satellite subsystems, including but not limited to: ADCS, CDH, GNC, Structure, Thermal, Propulsion, Communications or Payloads
• Experience with Python or Golang either writing prototype or production code, testing or tooling applications
• This position requires U.S. citizenship

Responsibilities

• In coordination with the PMO and Systems Engineering team, write and manage Jira tickets to guide work efforts, deadlines and priorities
• Engage in weekly team and 1:1 meetings as needed to ensure alignment on changes to priority or deadlines to Mission Planning imperatives
• Engage stakeholders as the primary Mission Planning technical leader for technical impact and staffing needs for new feature requests. This will involve: Learning the BlackSky Mission Planning and ground segment architecture through independent learning, team and cross-team training/interviews, stakeholder engagement and design participation
• Act as primary author or otherwise delegate and supervise authorship for new Mission Planning feature sets
• Lead kick-off meetings and cross-team IPTs in support of feature design, development and test
• Represent the Mission Planning team "up and out" - engaging frequently with Company Leadership, Systems Engineering, cross-team Leadership (Mission Management SW development Lead), Product and Sales on the state of Mission Planning features to resolve priority and resource conflicts
• Manage directly or supervise technical documentation regarding Mission Planner design work, including requirements documentation (decomposition from business level imperatives or systems level requirements), Jira ticket progress and status (in coordination with the PMO), internal stakeholder design documentation (e.g. PowerPoint presentations or White Papers explaining the planning logic or changes needed to fulfil certain customer requirements or contractual obligations)
• Drive progress in Mission Planning Prototype development through strong, focused priorities and strong technical leadership to enable rapid transition from prototype to Production software requirements
• Drive success criteria and testing to validate the utility and accuracy of prototype code before it becomes formal system requirements flowed to the Software development teams
• Understand Customer needs, "nice-to-haves" and hard requirements to assist in decomposing those requirements into manageable scope, actionable inputs, and ticketed work for the Mission Planning engineers to utilize in writing software requirements or prototypes. Mission Planning engineers will individually decompose these requirements and author software specific requirements, subsequently leading IPTs or Feature meetings to collaborate with the software developers in implementing Production code
• Understand user stories and expected customer experience for incoming feature requests
• Author or supervise architected solutions which address user needs. With firm understanding of existing system functionality, and with integrated knowledge of what is in the "realm of possible", coordinate with stakeholders to design architectures which meet customer needs while also integrating into existing Mission Planner software with minimal commercial impact
• Other relevant duties assigned

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior space mission experience, including Mission Planning, Launch and Early Operations, Customer Fulfilment or comparable realms of space mission execution
• Familiarity with Julia programming language in prototype applications
• Prior experience in functional management including technical mentorship and professional development

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, disability, group term life and AD&D, voluntary life and AD&D insurance BlackSky 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 Floating Holidays (pro-rated based on hire date), one day of paid volunteerism leave per year, parental leave and more
• 401(k) pre-tax and Roth deferral options with employer match
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Employee Stock Purchase Program
• Employee Assistance and Travel Assistance Programs
• Employer matching donations
• Professional development
• Mac or PC? Your choice!
• Awesome swag