Advanced Mission Design Engineer

Intuitive Machines LLC • Houston, TX

3d • Onsite

About The Position

Intuitive Machines is an innovative and cutting-edge space company making cislunar space accessible to both public and private customers. Our mission is to further science and exploration, communications, and economic progress from the Earth to the Moon and beyond. With multiple NASA lunar missions in development and additional private missions on our manifest, we pride ourselves in supporting NASA, our customers, and the nation in paving the way to return humans to the surface of the Moon. Our world-class team includes experts in all aspects of spacecraft subsystems design, development, and test, on-orbit operations, and safety.

Our long-term partnership with NASA has created an exciting opportunity for Advanced Mission Design Engineer on the JETS `contract at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.

If you’re excited about contributing to human space exploration and advancing our understanding of the universe, we’d like to hear from you. Join a team that values collaboration, diverse perspectives, and meaningful work. Your skills and ideas will help us design and deliver systems that support future space missions and create benefits here on Earth. We are excited about what we do, and we need you on our team as we take on exciting challenges for NASA’s pursuits in deep space exploration. As NASA’s largest engineering solutions provider working together with NASA at centers across the United States.

Requirements

• Requires a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a minimum of 2-5 years of experience in the field or in a related area
• Experience with orbital mechanics and designing spacecraft trajectories.
• Experience with development of spacecraft mission design algorithms and analyzing spacecraft performance.
• Experience developing, verifying, and validating simulation models.
• Excellent communication skills
• Experience working in a team environment consisting of NASA civil servants and contractors.
• Strong interpersonal skills to enable successful performance in a collaborative environment.
• Ability to organize and prioritize tasks to meet deadlines and schedules with limited supervision.
• Ability to prepare written documents and to verbally present at meetings.
• Experience with Microsoft Office products.
• A bachelor's degree in engineering from an ABET accredited engineering school with five (5) years of related engineering experience.
• A master's degree from an accredited engineering school and four (4) years of related engineering experience.
• Ph.D. from an accredited engineering school and zero (0) years of related experience.
• PhD in Aerospace Engineering with a focus on trajectory design, optimization, and orbital mechanics

Nice To Haves

• Experience with 3-DOF spacecraft simulations
• Proficiency in software development using programming languages such as Modern Fortran, Python, C++, bash, and Julia.
• Experience with Python package management systems such as Conda/mamba
• Experience with 3D graphics libraries such as OpenSceneGraph, OpenGL, and Open Frames.
• Experience with GUI development in Python and Qt
• Experience with multiple operating systems such as Windows, macOS Linux
• Experience with product delivery and management
• Experience with source code management tools such as Git/GitLab and continuous integration systems such as GitlabCI.

Responsibilities

• Perform trajectory optimization runs to characterize vehicle performance and mission availability for a variety of scenarios.
• Develop, integrate, and test new algorithms for evaluation of vehicle and mission performance.
• Provide software development and scripting of NASA's Copernicus trajectory optimization tool and related applications.
• Integrate Copernicus with other trajectory software and tools.
• Develop requirements documentation for mission design products.
• Provide recommendations for improvements in design and software development processes.
• Perform other duties as required.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees