Senior Systems Operations Engineer

Spire•Boulder, CO

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Senior Systems Operations Engineer at Spire, you will be responsible for ensuring that on-orbit mission operations meet and sustain technical and service-level objectives. You will serve as the technical link between the development and operations phases of the mission lifecycle, ensuring that the constellation behaves as expected and that any deviations are rapidly understood, assessed, and resolved with sound engineering judgment. This role is central to Spire’s strategy to deliver scalable, reliable, and technically assured services using model-based engineering and validated asset profiles. Your work will ensure that decisions affecting constellation performance are made with technical insight.

Requirements

BSc in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, Computer Science, or other relevant technical discipline.
3+ years of experience in system performance monitoring, root cause analysis, and anomaly resolution.
Solid understanding of space system behaviour on orbit, including thermal dynamics, power management, RF communications, and tasking impacts.
Ability to translate system-level engineering context into clear operational guidance and tooling requirements.
Familiarity with SLA-driven architectures, system observability, and mission assurance principles.
Clear communication skills to align stakeholders across engineering, operations, and customer delivery.
Familiarity with software tools and frameworks used in operations, including strong Python, SQL skills and GitHub-based workflows.

Nice To Haves

3+ years of experience supporting operations of multi-satellite constellations.
Knowledge of asset profiling approaches and system models (including fault profiles, mode transitions, and performance boundaries).
Understanding of ground-segment tooling, SRE practices, or telemetry/telecommand systems.
Experience working with cross-functional, multi-time zone teams across engineering and operations.
Background in satellite mission design, including the transition from development to operations.

Responsibilities

Own the technical quality of mission operations during the on-orbit service period, ensuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are well defined, monitored, and maintained.
Assess and design strategies to address underperformance, providing detailed technical insight and coordinating resolution strategies in collaboration with Systems Engineering, Mission Design, and SRE.
Define and manage the high-level structure and performance requirements of asset profiles, ensuring they accurately represent mission needs and provide a clear basis for verification. Work with System Owners and SMEs to ensure subsystem capabilities are properly characterised, and with SREs to ensure ongoing validation of in-orbit performance.
Bridge the gap between Systems Engineering, Mission Design, Program Management, Customer Service, and SRE by providing technical leadership during the mission service period. Define the tooling and functional monitoring needs that enable the SRE team to maintain constellation health and respond effectively to deviations.
Support SRE, Platform, and Customer Service leads in triaging constellation or satellite issues that deviate from nominal asset profile definitions, ensuring escalation paths and responses are technically justified.
Act as a technical reviewer and contributor during Mission Readiness Review (MRR) and pre-launch handover, ensuring operational teams are equipped with validated, well-understood assets and clearly defined expectations for mission performance.
Identify operational risks and propose mitigations related to in-orbit performance, platform limitations, or evolving CONOPS.
Ensure technical consistency and justification for on-orbit changes such as mode transitions, re-tasking, or adjustments to duty cycles or resource allocations. Lead the rollout of complex fleet-wide changes when CONOPS are being updated, ensuring risks and dependencies are managed.
Collaborate across SRE, Platform, and Systems teams to codify lessons learned into reusable operational standards, documentation, and improved design practices for future missions.
Derive and maintain Operational Requirements by helping project teams translate mission and system-level requirements into operational-level non-functional requirements (SLOs, latency, freshness, availability), with verification methods and traceability.
Support configuration control during service, helping manage the versioned operational baseline (limits, parameters, tasking configurations) and working with SREs, System Owners, and Customer Service to prevent configuration drift across the fleet.
Support the definition and coverage of FDIR (Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery) logic, ensuring coverage against top failure modes and reducing residual operational risk over time.