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Senior Mission Lead Systems Engineer Verified today

Muon Space · Remote · Space Systems · first seen 2026-07-16
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About the role

Muon seeks a Senior Mission Lead Systems Engineer to join our Mission Engineering team. You will serve as the technical lead for a specific Muon mission, owning the end-to-end technical success from concept through on-orbit operations for our most demanding missions, spanning both government and high-assurance commercial programs.

You will have a complete view of mission execution, spanning the full lifecycle from initial formulation with Business Development, through execution with space vehicle hardware and software teams, to on-orbit validation and mission performance monitoring with Operations. You will be the primary technical interface with customers and cross-functional team leads to develop requirements and interface control documents, work with other Systems Engineers to perform system modeling, develop test plans with AI&T teams, and identify and reduce risk across the program with Program Managers.

Muon is a lean and agile team. Success in this role requires your ability to right-size analysis and processes for differing levels of system maturity and risk, flexibility to work with changing demands and schedules, and effective communication of technical content to a diverse audience.

Responsibilities

  • Serve as the ultimate technical authority for your designated mission, leading conceptualization, design, and development. Drive critical cross-functional technical trades and decisions to ensure mission success.
  • Lead the tailoring and implementation of the Muon mission design process for your designated mission, ensuring alignment with program needs and contributing to process refinement across all missions.
  • Translate customer objectives and stakeholder needs into clear, verifiable, and actionable technical requirements for your designated mission.
  • Serve as the primary technical point of contact for your designated mission, interfacing with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders on all technical matters.
  • Manage requirements traceability, verification, and validation.
  • Define mission CONOPS and manage subsystem budgets (power, data, mass, pointing/stability).
  • Identify and mitigate internal and external mission risks, communicating impacts effectively.
  • Assess and coordinate design changes across disciplines throughout the program lifecycle.
  • Lead design, test readiness, and flight readiness reviews.
  • Monitor on-orbit spacecraft and data pipelines to ensure mission success and customer requirements are met.
  • Foster deep collaboration with and provide technical direction to systems, hardware, software, data, ground segment, and operations teams for your designated mission.
  • Serve as Mission Lead Systems Engineer for one mission while contributing general systems engineering expertise and support to other Muon missions.
  • Contribute to continuous improvement of engineering processes, tools, and methodologies.

Required qualifications

  • B.S. or higher degree in an engineering field and 10 or more years of experience in complex system, mission architecture, and/or spacecraft design, with a focus on high-rigor development for government and/or demanding commercial customers.
  • Demonstrated experience as a technical lead (e.g., Chief Engineer, Lead Systems Engineer) on at least one complex system design for a USG, DoD, IC customer, and/or commercial customer.
  • Experience directly interfacing with and managing expectations for external customers.
  • Extensive experience in system modeling, systems analysis, and running simulations.
  • Proven history of system integration and delivery of complex systems.
  • Experience in formal requirements management for a multi-disciplinary project.
  • Demonstrated project management skills and ability to collaborate with other engineering disciplines.
  • Excellent communication, presentation, and coordination skills.
  • Ability to rapidly change roles and responsibilities while working in a high-paced environment.

Nice-to-have skills

  • Experience with major space programs for USG, DoD, IC customer, and/or commercial customers.
  • Experience with USG/IC acquisition programs, standards for space systems development, and mission assurance standards.
  • Strong understanding of USG/IC contracts and their artifacts.
  • Experience supporting proposal development (RFI/RFP responses) for government contracts.
  • Software skills in Python or Julia.
  • Familiarity with software engineering tools and processes (version control, code review).
  • Knowledge of industry standards for electrical and/or software quality practices.
  • Remote sensing instrument experience across multiple modalities (optical, multispectral, RF) and their associated data pipelines.
  • Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.

Compensation and benefits

Salary range: $159,000 to $219,000, plus competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location.

Full-time employees receive equity compensation, medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401k retirement plan, short and long-term disability and life insurance, three weeks paid vacation for new employees, 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time, and paid parental leave.

Export control requirement

This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. Section 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. Section 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency.