Senior Guidance, Navigation, and Controls (GNC) Engineer Verified today
About Varda
Varda accelerates commercial space infrastructure development, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable reentry capsules. The W-Series vehicles are built, designed and operated entirely in-house, including processing payloads, capsules, C-PICA heat shields and satellite buses.
The Role
As Senior GNC Engineer, you own the full lifecycle of GNC development from design through unit and hardware-in-the-loop testing, vehicle integration, mission planning and flight operations. You will perform system analyses including simulations and Monte Carlo to satisfy specifications and drive architectural decisions. You will contribute to Varda's multi-degree of freedom aerospace simulation and test framework, maintain design documentation, and see the GNC subsystem through from initial analysis and design through vehicle integration, mission planning, on-orbit operations and reentry support.
Responsibilities
- Specify ADCS hardware performance including reaction wheels, torque rods, IMU/GPS and star trackers
- Design and implement autonomous satellite attitude control, collision avoidance, orbital rendezvous, burn planning and atmospheric reentry algorithms
- Perform trajectory design, optimization and dispersion analysis for space capsule reentry
- Develop 6 degree of freedom vehicle simulation using C++, Python and MATLAB/Simulink
- Run Monte Carlo analysis to characterize vehicle and mission capability performance
- Integrate and test GNC sensors, actuators and software in hardware-in-the-loop environment
- Design and implement ground tooling for automated maneuver responsibility and scheduling
- Monitor on-orbit system performance and troubleshoot as needed
- Coordinate with spacecraft operators, third-party agencies and the US government
Basic Qualifications
- B.S. degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, physics or related field
- 5+ years of proven experience, or PhD with 3+ years of relevant experience
- Demonstrated knowledge designing, modeling, testing and flying aerospace GNC systems
- Highly adept software and model development skills in C++/Python
- Understanding of orbital mechanics, modeling and simulation and software development
- Experience anchoring and fitting first principles models to test data or high-fidelity external simulations
- Proven system engineering and configuration management skills
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Master's degree in engineering or physics
- Spacecraft attitude determination and control system design experience
- Experience with GMAT, POST2 or similar tools
- Understanding of multi-body dynamics, flexible body dynamics, gas dynamics, fluids and thermodynamics
- Developing and verifying physical models for control design, component sizing and system performance evaluation
- Supporting safety critical flight tests or spacecraft
- Risk management and solutions using lean and state of the art software development techniques
Pay and Location
- Salary range: $169,067 to $216,031 per year
- On-site in El Segundo, California
- Base salary determined by job-related skills, education, experience and performance
- Eligible for long-term incentives including stock options and long-term cash awards
ITAR and Eligibility
Varda requires employees to be US persons with authorization to work in the United States and access to export-controlled items. US person means: US citizen, US lawful permanent resident, or individual admitted as a refugee or granted asylum.