LEO Satellite Constellation Ground Systems Engineer

ASRC Federal•Suitland-Silver Hill, MD

About The Position

This "LEO Satellite Constellation Ground Systems Engineer” for the Engineering and Mission Operations Support Services -VII (EMOSS-VII) contract, this position, based in Suitland, MD requires proven education and experience to demonstrate capacity to perform satellite ground systems engineering at a high-performance level. Our client is responsible for engineering and mission operations support for environment monitoring satellites managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Satellite and Product Operations (OSPO). To perform this function well, the engineer must communicate effectively between many different teams in order to assure there are no conflicts among ground resources. The position will participate in spacecraft integration and test and contribute to the development and verification of command procedures and mission operations plans and procedures. The position will participate in the operational validation of the ground segment, including interface tests, end-to-end tests and mission simulations The ability to maintain a known and redundant ground configuration is key to success.

Requirements

Bachelors’ degree or equivalent experience in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, or other related disciplines and minimum of 10 to 12 years’ experience.
User experience with Window XP/NT, Linux and Unix operating systems
Shell scripting and aliasing

Nice To Haves

Experience using multiple operating systems, including Unix, Windows, and RedHat
Knowledge of industry programming languages, including PERL, Python and JAVA
Advanced use of Excel, Visio, PowerPoint, Access
Ability to create and conduct informative and high-quality presentations on complex operational subjects.
Current NOAA or NASA badge

Responsibilities

Verification of nominal daily operation and performance.
Maintaining a complex but known ground configuration
Attend daily and weekly coordination meetings
Assure adequate redundancy among all mission critical equipment
Respond immediately to outages that interrupt data flows
Delegate ground equipment performance monitoring as needed while maintaining 24/7 operations
Investigate anomalous alarms and behavior within the ground system
Document and report major issues that have impacted operations
Observe critical weather days
Support spacecraft operations
Support product generation and distribution
Communicate effectively with key stakeholders in order to assure confidence in activities about to take place
Coordinate and participate in ground software release regression, operational and parallel testing to include monthly IT security patches.
Review and control proposed changes to the operational baseline using configuration management practices.
Develop, document and maintain operational procedures
Propose new or execute improvements to processes and tools that will increase long term reliability, monitoring, and anomaly detection capability.
Provide 24/7 on-call contingency support to real-time operations.
Preparation of regular reports and liaison with internal and external personnel.
Provide training to NOAA Operations Control Center Team
Coordinate with many internal and external partners, including the Mission Operations Support Team (MOST), Command and Data Acquisition Station (CDAS) team, NOAA Systems, Support, and IT branches
Provide on-console engineering support during spacecraft special operations
Perform activities involving the production and execution of Mission Plans, Schedules, and activities associated with operation, tasking, and tuning of mission assets.
Understand how automation of nominal supports is driven with pass scripts generated by the scheduling system
Understand how pass scripts conform to script formats used by the satellite ground system command and control system
Understand how the ground system reads the pass scripts using scripted procedures developed by the Mission Operations Team.
Understand how once the pass script is read successfully, the ground system will queue each of the scheduled activities as defined in the pass script.
Ability to provide technical solutions to complex mission management problems is required.
Ability to work with minimal supervision following established procedures and the ability to determine new solutions to mission situations is necessary.
Must be able to interact with multiple customers, both on and off-site.
Experience in configuration management practices, using the baseline control approach to operational changes.
Ability to create and conduct informative and high-quality presentations on complex operational subjects.
Experience with creating and maintaining satellite operations documentation