Spacecraft System Architect Lead

Stoke Space • Kent, WA

22h • $151,305 - $393,435

About The Position

Stoke is building Nova, a fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle designed for daily flight. This role is part of a new, intentionally small organization focused on developing products on a 3–10 year horizon that expand Stoke beyond launch, including spacecraft and on-orbit mobility, downmass capabilities, satellites, platforms, and in-space factories.

As a founding technical member of the team, the Spacecraft System Architect Lead translates customer input and business goals into system architectures, concepts of operations, system requirements, and product breakdowns, then carries the architecture through detailed design, build, test, flight, and on-orbit operations. The role makes early cross-disciplinary trades with limited information, determines what to build, buy, or source through partners, and helps grow the team. It also acts as program lead for schedule, budget, and risk through first flight, while learning from integrated tests and flight to inform subsequent architectures.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in aerospace, mechanical, or electrical engineering, physics, or a related field.
• At least 10 years of spacecraft or launch vehicle engineering experience, including at least one spacecraft carried from concept through on-orbit operations.
• Experience as a chief engineer, system architect, vehicle lead, or equivalent accountable technical lead on a spacecraft or stage.
• Exceptional command of fundamentals in one or more of structures, propulsion, thermal, power, GNC, avionics, or software, and ability to apply first-order analysis across all of them.
• Demonstrated ability to make rapid, well-reasoned architectural decisions across disciplines with incomplete information.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to lead and to follow.

Nice To Haves

• Flight heritage on a long-duration spacecraft (GEO, MEO, cislunar, or multi-year LEO) where thermal, power, radiation, and propellant management over the mission life drove the design.
• Experience with atmospheric reentry, aerobraking, or other atmospheric flight phases of a space vehicle.
• Exposure to high-delta-v maneuvering, rendezvous and proximity operations, or refueling.
• Experience shipping flight hardware on a startup timeline, at a company or within a team where you made the architectural trades rather than inheriting them.
• Production-rate or constellation bus experience, including cost-per-unit and factory mindset, in addition to bespoke performance.
• Experience with national-security space customers and the demonstration-to-program path.
• Experience with storable or green chemical propulsion, electric propulsion, or refueling interfaces.
• Experience leading or managing engineering teams.
• Master's degree or PhD in aerospace engineering or a related field.

Responsibilities

• Translate customer and business objectives into system concepts, concepts of operations, functional capabilities, and system requirements for the group's products.
• Develop the product breakdown and perform first-order analysis across disciplines to estimate system size, mass, power, cost, and performance with incomplete information.
• Make cross-disciplinary trades across propulsion, GNC, power, thermal, structures, avionics, software, and ground systems, and carry them through architecture and design reviews.
• Establish design margins, reliability targets, and an incremental development path from first demonstration to production.
• Define interfaces to Nova and customer systems; select and manage external partners for major subsystems, owning requirements, interface control, and acceptance.
• Support the full product lifecycle, including detailed design, integration, test, launch, and on-orbit operations, and feed lessons learned into future architectures.
• Represent the product technically with customers and partners alongside Stoke's business development team.
• Lead program schedule, budget, and risk through first flight.
• Help grow the engineering team as the product matures.

Benefits

• Equity in the form of stock options for regular, full-time employees.
• Comprehensive benefits program including subsidized medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Company-paid life and disability insurance.
• 401(k) plan with employer match.
• Four weeks of paid time off.
• Ten holidays, including an end-of-year closure.
• Paid family/parental leave.
• On-site gym or monthly wellness stipend, depending on location.
• Dog-friendly offices.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior