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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. This role is part of a new organization within Stoke focused on developing spacecraft and on-orbit mobility products on a 3–10 year horizon—taking mass beyond launch to any orbit, enabling downmass return to Earth, and supporting satellites, platforms, and factories in space.
As Spacecraft System Architect, you are a founding technical member of this small, lean team. You will translate customer input and business goals into conceptual system architecture, concept of operations, system requirements, and product breakdown. You will carry that architecture through detailed design, build, test, flight, and on-orbit operations. You will make early cross-disciplinary trades (propulsion, GNC, power, thermal, structures, avionics, software, ground) with incomplete information and own the consequences on vehicles designed for years of operation. You will decide what to build, what to buy, and what to partner for, and help grow the engineering team as the product matures.
Key responsibilities include:
- Translating customer and business objectives into system concepts, ConOps, functional capabilities, and system requirements
- Developing product breakdown and performing first-order analysis across all disciplines to size the system and estimate mass, power, cost, and performance with incomplete information
- Making early cross-disciplinary trades with limited information and carrying them through architecture and design reviews
- Establishing design margins, reliability targets, and an incremental development path from first demonstration to production
- Defining interfaces to Nova and customer systems; selecting and managing external partners for major subsystems
- Supporting the full product lifecycle: detailed design, integration, test, launch, and on-orbit operations; feeding lessons learned back into the next architecture
- Serving as the technical face of the product with customers and partners
- Acting as program lead for schedule, budget, and risk through first flight; helping grow the engineering team
This is a high-ownership role in a startup environment where you must stay focused, move fast, self-direct, and learn on the fly.
**Requirements:**
- Bachelor's degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, physics, or related field
- 10+ years of spacecraft or launch vehicle engineering experience, including at least one spacecraft carried from concept through on-orbit operations
- Experience as a chief engineer, system architect, vehicle lead, or equivalent accountable technical role on a spacecraft or stage
- Exceptional command of fundamentals in one or more of structures, propulsion, thermal, power, GNC, avionics, or software, with ability to apply first-order analysis across all disciplines
- Demonstrated ability to make rapid, well-reasoned architectural decisions across disciplines with incomplete information
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to lead and to follow
**Preferred qualifications:**
- Flight heritage on long-duration spacecraft (GEO, MEO, cislunar, or multi-year LEO) where thermal, power, radiation, and propellant management drove design
- Experience with atmospheric reentry, aerobraking, or other atmospheric flight phases
- Exposure to high-delta-v maneuvering, rendezvous and proximity operations, or refueling
- Shipped flight hardware on a startup timeline, making architectural trades yourself rather than inheriting them
- Production-rate or constellation bus experience (cost per unit, factory mindset) in addition to bespoke performance
- Experience with national-security space customers and the demonstration-to-program path
- Experience with storable or green chemical propulsion, electric propulsion, or refueling interfaces
- Experience leading or managing engineering teams
- Master's degree or PhD in aerospace engineering or related field
**ITAR Requirement:** Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3) due to export control regulations.
