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Salary: USD 151,305 - 393,435 / annual
STOKE Space is building Nova, a fully reusable launch vehicle designed for daily flight to radically lower launch costs and increase space industry scalability. This role leads mission design for a new organization within STOKE focused on developing products over a 3–10 year horizon that extend beyond launch: spacecraft and on-orbit mobility, downmass systems, and satellites/platforms/factories for on-orbit operations.
As Mission Design Lead, you own mission design across the entire product portfolio. You answer two foundational questions: given a spacecraft, what missions can it perform, and given a mission, what spacecraft does it take. You will design and optimize trajectories across LEO, MEO, GEO, cislunar, and lunar space—covering orbital transfers, long-dwell operations, refueling logistics, constellation deployment, and Earth return. Your trajectory analysis feeds downstream work: thermal environments for propellant management, aerothermal loads for aerobraking and reentry, power and eclipse profiles, and communication geometry. You build and maintain in-house trajectory and mission-analysis tools to ensure consistent physics-based evaluation across all products.
Key responsibilities include: designing and optimizing trajectories and mission profiles across multiple orbital regimes; mapping vehicle capability to mission capability through delta-v budgets, propellant trades, and timeline analysis for chemical, electric, and multi-mode propulsion; providing trajectory-derived inputs to thermal, radiation, aerothermal, power, and communication studies; building and maintaining trajectory tooling (custom code plus industry packages like GMAT, Copernicus, FreeFlyer, STK, POST2); defining GNC and flight-dynamics requirements flowing from mission design and verifying flight system performance; owning flight-safety, conjunction-assessment, and regulatory analysis for maneuvering missions; and helping grow the mission design team as products mature.
The organization is intentionally small, and everyone carries multiple responsibilities. You must be ready to stay focused, move fast, self-direct, and learn on the fly.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Master's or PhD in aerospace engineering, astrodynamics, applied mathematics, or 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
- Proficiency writing tools in 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
- U.S. citizenship, lawful permanent resident status, or protected individual status (ITAR requirement)
PREFERRED:
- Mission design for GEO, cislunar, or lunar missions (transfer, capture, landing) or refueling/servicing logistics
- Aerobraking, aerocapture, or entry/descent/landing trajectory design
- Electric and multi-mode propulsion trajectory design
- Rendezvous and proximity operations mission design
- GNC architecture or flight software experience
- Experience building or leading a flight dynamics or mission design group
- Familiarity with national-security space mission planning
