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Senior Mission Lead Systems Engineer, Commercial Payloads Verified today

Muon Space · San Jose, CA · Space Systems · first seen 2026-09-05
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About the role

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

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

Muon is lean and agile. Success in this role requires your ability to right-size analysis and processes for different system maturity levels and risk, flexibility with changing demands and schedules, and clear communication of technical content to diverse audiences.

This position is hybrid, requiring three days per week on-site in San Jose, CA.

Responsibilities

  • Serve as the ultimate technical authority for your designated mission, leading conceptualization, design, and development. Drive critical cross-functional technical trades and decisions.
  • Lead tailoring and implementation of the Muon mission design process for your 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.
  • Serve as the primary technical point of contact for your 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 mission, and support these interactions across other missions.
  • Serve as Mission Lead Systems Engineer for one mission while contributing general systems engineering expertise to other Muon missions, potentially deputizing for other Mission Lead Systems Engineers.
  • Contribute to continuous improvement of engineering processes, tools, and methodologies.

Required qualifications

  • B.S. or higher degree in engineering and 10+ years of experience in complex system, mission architecture, and/or spacecraft design, with focus on high-rigor development for government and/or demanding commercial customers.
  • Demonstrated experience as a technical lead (Chief Engineer, Lead Systems Engineer) on at least one complex system design for a USG, DoD, IC, or commercial customer.
  • Direct experience 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 multi-disciplinary projects.
  • 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 in a high-paced environment.

Nice-to-have skills

  • Experience with major space programs for USG, DoD, IC, or commercial customers.
  • Experience with standards for space systems development and mission assurance.
  • Experience with Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) subsystem requirements, analysis, and trade spaces for Earth observation missions.
  • Space system Assembly, Integration, and Test (AI&T) processes.
  • Support for proposal development (RFI/RFP responses) for government contracts.
  • Python or Julia programming.
  • Familiarity with software engineering tools and processes (version control, code review).
  • Knowledge of industry standards for electrical and software quality practices.
  • Remote sensing instrument experience across multiple modalities (optical, multispectral, RF) and associated data pipelines.
  • Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.

Compensation

Salary range: $190,000 to $219,000, plus competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location.

Benefits

Full-time employees receive 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.

ITAR/Export control requirement

This position requires access to export controlled information. Applicant must be a U.S. person as defined by export regulations: U.S. citizen or national, U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158. Alternatively, applicant must be eligible to access export controlled information without required export authorization or eligible and reasonably likely to obtain required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency.