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Director, Payload Systems Integration & Test Verified today

Varda Space · El Segundo, CA · Payload · first seen 2026-09-26
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About Varda

Varda develops commercial space infrastructure, including in-orbit pharmaceutical processing and reentry capsules. The W-Series vehicles, payloads, heat shields, and satellite buses are all built, designed, and operated in-house.

The Role

As Director of Payload Systems Integration and Test, you will lead and grow a multidisciplinary engineering team responsible for end-to-end mission success across a diverse payload portfolio: inertial, RF, and optical sensors, communication systems, and pharmaceutical processing payloads. You combine deep technical authority with team leadership, product definition, and customer delivery. You own the successful execution of multiple concurrent payload missions, delivering flight hardware that operates in orbit, survives hypersonic reentry, and returns to Earth reliably and at scale.

Your team serves as the technical bridge between each payload and the Varda vehicle, defining interfaces, planning and executing payload integration and test campaigns, coordinating in-orbit operations, and ensuring safe recovery of payload data and hardware. You manage day-to-day execution, hiring and headcount planning, new project scoping, and development of standard workflows. You own and evolve the Varda Payload User Guide, defining standard interfaces and accommodations for hosted payloads, and develop a roadmap that expands the set of customers and use cases Varda can support.

Key Responsibilities

  • Build and lead the Payload Systems Integration and Test team, hiring and developing engineers across experience levels
  • Own integration and test for pharmaceutical processing payloads: test planning, functional and process verification, contamination control, and environmental qualification of fluidic and thermal flight hardware
  • Partner with Payload and Mechanisms development engineers on pharma payload designs, shaping testability and supporting fast iteration
  • Determine how to meet customer mission objectives with the existing platform, or scope non-recurring engineering and coordinate development teams
  • Own payload interface definition and requirements: ICDs, interface verification, and standards documentation for external customers and internal teams
  • Plan and execute payload integration and test campaigns including interface verification, functional testing, and environmental qualification (random vibration, thermal vacuum, EMI/EMC, shock)
  • Work with production crew building and integrating payload hardware, establishing cleanroom practices across both lines
  • Coordinate with Vehicle Integration and Test as a sister function
  • Work with Mission Management to hit contract milestones and customer commitments; serve as technical face to customers through mission lifecycle
  • Support payload operations through flight, reentry, and recovery
  • Establish and mature processes, documentation, and cleanroom practices that enable payload integration to scale with mission cadence

Basic Qualifications

  • 10+ years of spacecraft or aerospace hardware experience spanning integration, test, and mission execution
  • Demonstrated ability to take poorly-defined technical problems and turn them into executable plans, interfaces, and requirements
  • Hands-on experience planning and running environmental qualification campaigns on flight hardware
  • Strong interface engineering background: ICDs, requirements flow-down, interface verification across organizational boundaries
  • Experience leading engineers, including hiring and developing early-career talent
  • Breadth across mechanical, thermal, fluidic, electrical, and software interfaces, with depth to be credible technical backstop for the team
  • Cleanroom operations and contamination control
  • Customer-facing experience: scoping work, managing execution schedules, setting expectations, and negotiating technical commitments
  • B.S. in a relevant engineering discipline

Preferred Qualifications

  • Active TS/SCI security clearance, or eligibility to be granted one
  • Test and verification experience with fluidic, thermal, or process hardware (pharmaceutical, biological, chemical, or life sciences payloads)
  • Experience with payload accommodation on a hosted or rideshare platform
  • Reentry, recovery, or landed-vehicle experience
  • Defense or government program experience
  • Experience standing up a new function or team
  • M.S. in aerospace, mechanical, chemical, or systems engineering

Compensation and Location

  • Salary range: $192,500 to $278,056 per year
  • Leveling and base salary determined by job-related skills, education, experience, and job performance
  • Eligible for stock options and/or long-term cash awards
  • On-site in El Segundo, California

Employment Authorization

Varda hires only U.S. persons permitted to have access to export-controlled technology without an export license. U.S. person means: U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3) (refugee or asylee status).