Senior Mission Design Engineer Verified today

About Varda

Varda is accelerating commercial space infrastructure development, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable reentry capsules. The W-Series vehicles are built, designed, and operated entirely by Varda in-house, including processing payloads, capsules, C-PICA heat shields, and satellite buses.

About This Role

We seek a Senior Mission Design Engineer to join our Autonomous Systems team. You will create, design, and implement full-cycle mission planning and orbital mechanics profiles for next-generation reentry vehicles. Working with a multidisciplinary engineering team, you will architect the mission plan and trajectory of the world's first commercial reentry vehicle, enabling precision landing and return of manufactured products to Earth.

You will own the full cycle of mission planning and orbital dynamics development, from requirements definition and design through mission planning and on-orbit and reentry operations. You will develop modeling and simulation infrastructure to ensure trajectory design and reentry profiles are accurate, reliable, and safe.

Responsibilities

• Perform trajectory design, optimization, and dispersion analysis for reentry of next-generation space vehicles
• Design spacecraft trajectories and produce orbital analyses for commercial reentry vehicles
• Optimize trajectories based on fuel, time, and performance characteristics
• Work closely with propulsion, software, and flight operations teams to ensure vehicle and mission objectives are met
• Design and implement autonomous satellite navigational solutions, collision avoidance, orbital rendezvous, and atmospheric re-entry algorithms
• Run Monte Carlo analysis to characterize performance of new features
• Lead development of new vehicle capabilities
• Develop and maintain ground-based mission operations tooling for automated and scalable on-orbit operations
• Support in-orbit operations as trajectory specialist, including coordination with other spacecraft operators and third-party entities

Required Qualifications

• B.S. degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, physics, or related field
• 5+ years proven experience, or PhD with 3+ years relevant experience
• Demonstrated knowledge in designing, modeling, testing, and flying orbital trajectories or aerospace guidance, navigation, and control systems
• Highly adept software and model development skills, particularly in C++, Python, and Matlab
• 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
• Teamwork skills to solve problems in a collaborative environment
• Ability to scope projects, capture requirements, and conduct initial design trades given open-ended problems

Preferred Experience

• Understanding of multi-body dynamics, flexible body dynamics, gas dynamics, fluids, and thermodynamics
• Experience developing and verifying physical models for control design, component sizing, and system performance evaluation
• Experience supporting flight test or flying spacecraft
• Ability to manage risk and provide solutions using lean software development techniques
• Project management experience for cradle-to-grave projects
• Prior technical leadership role in launch vehicle or satellite development
• Prior work in a startup or agile development environment
• Passion for advancing the commercial space industry

Compensation and Location

Salary range: $169,067 to $216,031 per year. This role is on-site in El Segundo, CA. Leveling and base salary determined by job-related skills, education, experience, and performance. Eligible for long-term incentives including stock options and/or long-term cash awards.

Work Authorization

Varda must ensure all U.S. employees are lawfully authorized to work. Due to access to export-controlled items, we hire only "U.S. persons" permitted to access our technology without an export license. U.S. person means: U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or individual admitted as a refugee or granted asylum under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).