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Salary: USD 157,000 - 206,000 / annual
Cowboy Space Corp. is building infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy through Low Earth Orbit satellites that collect sunlight and enable new capabilities—from powering on-orbit compute to transmitting energy via infrared lasers and delivering secure, high-bandwidth optical data. Founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt (Robinhood co-founder) and backed by leading investors, the company is staffed by aerospace and defense veterans moving quickly to solve complex technical challenges.
You will serve as the technical authority and discipline lead for the Autonomous Flight Termination System (AFTS)—one of the longest-lead, highest-consequence items on the path to first flight. This is a Staff-level individual contributor role where you own the AFTS end-to-end: Range and FAA relationships, flight safety analysis, safety-critical avionics architecture, and the qualification and certification campaign.
Key responsibilities include: owning the flight safety system from concept through flight readiness; actively participating in board- and system-level hardware design reviews; leading the AFTS relationship with Space Launch Delta 45 (Eastern Range) and FAA/AST; making build-versus-integrate decisions including CASS integration; defining flight abort rules, hazard and debris footprint analysis, and mission data loads; specifying redundant flight computers, independent GPS/INS navigation, power, and telemetry interfaces to RCC 319 standards; owning the environmental qualification campaign (vibration, shock, thermal, EMI); delivering clear safety requirements to avionics, GNC, propulsion, and structures teams; investigating anomalies and reconstructing flight safety performance from telemetry; establishing methods, tools, and standards for the flight safety discipline; and mentoring engineers across avionics and GNC teams.
You will work closely with the avionics team to define the safety-critical architecture and set technical direction for Cowboy's flight safety discipline without formal management authority. This role requires deep expertise in autonomous flight termination systems, range certification processes, and regulatory compliance with FAA Part 450 and RCC 319 requirements.
