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Salary: USD 126,000 - 167,000 / annual
Anduril Industries is seeking a Systems Engineer specializing in Spacecraft Operations for Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO). This role is part of Anduril's Space team, which is developing AI-powered capabilities for Space Domain Awareness, Space Control, and Command and Control for U.S. military and allied partners.
You will own the design and execution of RPO mission plans, including relative motion design, approach and hold-point sequencing, delta-V budgets, and timelines coordinated with communication passes, lighting, and ground contact. You will build passive safety into every approach to prevent collision trajectories from missed burns, dropped passes, or off-nominal states.
Key responsibilities include:
- Authoring flight rules and procedures governing close approach operations, including keep-out volume enforcement, go/no-go gates, abort and breakout criteria, and conjunction screening
- Owning mission operations plans and procedures across all spacecraft program phases (LEOP, commissioning, on-orbit checkout, operations)
- Driving the pre-launch campaign: writing and executing day-in-the-life and mission rehearsals, injecting failures, and translating findings into procedure or design changes
- Serving as the operations voice during AI&T, validating procedures and command sequences on flatsats and hardware-in-the-loop testbeds before flight hardware integration
- Feeding operational constraints back into GNC, flight software, ground software, and communications design
- Creating and analyzing metrics to debug and monitor vehicle and campaign performance
- Triaging anomalies, root-causing failures, and coordinating next steps under time pressure
- Training operators and mission crews on Anduril spacecraft and RPO execution
- Supporting demanding schedules during ground testing, launch windows, and on-orbit operations
- Coordinating with government agencies to obtain required licenses (FCC, NOAA) and ensure regulatory compliance for spacecraft operations
This role is directly tied to ongoing programs within Anduril's Space Business Line, working with mission partners and customers to deploy reliable and robust capabilities on operationally-relevant fielding timelines.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Top Secret security clearance
- Strong engineering background from industry or school, ideally in Aerospace Engineering, Astrodynamics, Computer Science, or another engineering field
- 4+ years of professional spacecraft operations, mission planning, or flight dynamics experience
- Direct RPO experience on a flown or near-flight mission (planning or execution side): relative orbit design, proximity operations trajectory planning, maneuver planning and reconstruction, or close-approach execution on console
- Experience taking a spacecraft through pre-launch operational readiness: AI&T support, procedure validation, mission rehearsals, day-in-the-life testing, and operational readiness reviews
- Ability to quickly understand and navigate complex systems and detailed requirements
- Capable of solving complex technical problems with little oversight
- Clear written communication skills, including procedures, flight rules, and training material
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience on on-orbit servicing, inspection, docking, or refueling missions
- Experience with autonomous or onboard relative navigation, including vision-based or optical relative nav
- Flight dynamics depth: orbit determination, maneuver calibration, and maneuver reconstruction
- Experience with conjunction assessment and space traffic coordination
- Experience operating government, DoD, or IC spacecraft
- Experience with STK/Astrogator, ODTK, MATLAB, or Simulink
- Experience with Python and Linux systems
- Experience with testing and validation on flatsats and hardware-in-the-loop testbeds
- Exposure to ground station operations and providers
