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Rocket Lab is seeking a Flight Dynamics Engineer II to join its Space Systems team in Littleton, Colorado. In this role, you will perform tracking, navigation, maneuver planning, trajectory design, and collision avoidance analysis for Earth-orbiting, lunar, and interplanetary missions. You'll work collaboratively with subject matter experts across Systems, Ground Software, Electrical, Avionics, Flight Software, Thermal, Propulsion, and GNC engineering disciplines to solve complex problems, sometimes under time-critical conditions.
Key responsibilities include developing and analyzing launch vehicle and spacecraft trajectories (ascent, orbit insertion, orbital maneuvers), performing orbital propagation and rendezvous planning, supporting mission design with launch window analysis and delta-V budgets, and interfacing with flight software and GNC teams to validate guidance profiles. You will generate trajectory data products for mission readiness reviews, contribute to in-house simulation tools and flight dynamics infrastructure, and support real-time mission operations including anomaly response and post-launch analysis.
Required qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Space Systems, or equivalent Engineering/Applied Physics; 2+ years in mission design or flight dynamics; knowledge of orbital mechanics (spaceflight dynamics, maneuver design, orbit determination, Kalman filtering); experience with mission analysis tools (STK, Astrogator, GMAT, Monte, Copernicus, or equivalent); Python software development; Git or equivalent version control; Jira or equivalent project management; U.S. citizenship required due to program requirements.
Desirable qualifications include Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering, active Secret or TS/SCI clearance, Monte Carlo simulation experience, orbit determination analysis (ODTK, Orekit), team/software project management experience, and ability to work complex problems under pressure. Rocket Lab has enabled over 1,700 missions for partners including NASA, the Space Development Agency, and the U.S. Space Force.
