Navigation Engineer II

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

1d•$118,248 - $144,144•Onsite

About The Position

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) seeks a Navigation Engineer to support Earth’s gravity-field recovery, precise orbit determination, and simulation activities for the GRACE-FO and GRACE-C missions. The role focuses on developing, implementing, and validating methods and software to estimate Earth’s gravity field and its temporal variations from spacecraft tracking and instrument measurements. The position is within the Solar System Dynamics Group of JPL’s Mission Design and Navigation Section. The group studies the orbits and physical characteristics of natural bodies throughout the solar system, including characterizing gravity fields, rotation, and shape; predicting natural-body orbits; assessing potential Earth impacts from near-Earth objects; developing scientific models and analysis methods; and maintaining and disseminating ephemerides and related dynamical information. The Navigation Engineer collaborates with scientists and engineers to investigate planetary interiors, improve dynamical models, and support mission planning and scientific investigations. The engineer reports administratively to the Group Supervisor and programmatically to relevant program or project leads. The role includes conducting technical analysis and software-development tasks, validating results, communicating findings, and contributing to documentation and research publications.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, astronomy, or a related technical discipline and typically at least 3 years of related experience; or a master’s degree in a similar discipline and at least 1 year of related experience; or a PhD in a similar discipline.
Demonstrated experience in satellite gravity-field recovery or closely related spacecraft-based gravity estimation, including hands-on estimation of gravity-field parameters from tracking observations.
Strong knowledge of orbital dynamics, statistical estimation, numerical methods, and the mathematical foundations of gravity-field modeling.
Experience with precise orbit determination and estimation of dynamical or instrument parameters from spacecraft measurements.
Understanding of measurement weighting, parameter observability, correlations, covariance analysis, and systematic errors.
Proficiency in scientific programming using one or more of Fortran, Python, C++, or MATLAB.
Experience developing, testing, debugging, and documenting scientific analysis software.
Ability to critically evaluate technical results and communicate findings clearly to technical audiences.
Ability to work independently on assigned tasks and collaborate effectively within a multidisciplinary team.

Nice To Haves

Experience recovering Earth’s time-variable gravity field from GRACE or GRACE-FO.
Familiarity with GRACE, GRACE-FO, or GRACE-C measurement architectures and instrument characteristics.
Experience processing or modeling intersatellite ranging, GPS/GNSS, accelerometer, and attitude observations.
Experience estimating spherical harmonic gravity-field coefficients and mascon models and evaluating the resulting solutions.
Familiarity with tidal models, atmospheric and oceanic de-aliasing products, reference frames, Earth orientation parameters, and nongravitational force modeling.
Experience with accelerometer calibration, ranging-system errors, colored measurement noise, or regularization methods.
Experience with large-scale estimation problems, efficient numerical linear algebra, or high-performance computing.
A publication record demonstrating contributions to spacecraft-based gravity-field recovery, precise orbit determination, or closely related research.
Experience with Fortran-based scientific software and Python-based analysis workflows.
Familiarity with MONTE, particularly for maintaining existing processing tools.
Ability to lead defined technical tasks and collaborate across organizational or institutional boundaries.

Responsibilities

Perform precise orbit determination, gravity-field recovery, and simulation studies in support of GRACE-FO and GRACE-C.
Develop, implement, test, and maintain scientific software for processing spacecraft observations and estimating orbital, gravity-field, and instrument parameters.
Process and analyze mission data, including intersatellite microwave and laser ranging, GPS/GNSS observations, accelerometer measurements, and spacecraft attitude data as applicable.
Estimate spacecraft orbital states, gravity-field coefficients, accelerometer calibration parameters, and other relevant model parameters, including their uncertainties.
Apply and evaluate dynamical and observation models, including gravitational and nongravitational accelerations, tides, and atmospheric and oceanic mass variability.
Assess data quality, select observation weights, identify anomalous measurements, and investigate systematic errors in orbit and gravity-field solutions.
Conduct covariance, sensitivity, and error-budget analyses to evaluate the effects of measurement errors, instrument performance, and modeling assumptions on gravity-field recovery.
Validate recovered gravity fields and orbit solutions through residual analysis, comparison with independent solutions or observations, and other diagnostic methods.
Present analysis results, simulation findings, and uncertainty assessments to project scientists, technical leads, and collaborators.
Collaborate with colleagues to document methods and publish research results in peer-reviewed journals.
Contribute to trade studies involving measurement accuracy, data types, processing strategies, and gravity-recovery performance.
Develop and assess improved physical models, estimation methods, and computational tools.
Support development and testing of processing capabilities for GRACE-C.
Prepare technical documentation, status reports, and presentations for project reviews.
Coordinate with engineers, scientists, and external collaborators on assigned technical activities.
Take responsibility for defined analysis or software-development tasks, including planning, execution, verification, and reporting.