Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer

Space Kinetic•El Segundo, CA

11d•$135,000 - $165,000

About The Position

Space Kinetic is seeking a Spacecraft System Safety & Mission Assurance Engineer to help ensure their space vehicles can safely and reliably accomplish their missions. This role involves identifying mission risks, evaluating hazardous and off-nominal conditions, and developing effective fault-protection strategies across the full program lifecycle. The engineer will partner across disciplines to influence spacecraft architecture, operational concepts, verification planning, and mission decision-making for government space programs.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, systems engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, or a related technical field.
3–7 years of relevant experience in spacecraft, launch vehicles, aerospace systems, autonomous systems, or other complex safety-critical systems.
Experience in system safety, reliability, fault management, mission assurance, or spacecraft systems engineering.
Working knowledge of spacecraft subsystem interactions and end-to-end space vehicle operations.
Experience developing or assessing fault detection, isolation, recovery, safing, or fault-tolerant system behavior.
Familiarity with functional hazard assessments, fault tree analyses, failure modes and effects analyses, or similar risk-analysis methods.
Experience developing, reviewing, or verifying technical requirements and resolving multidisciplinary technical issues.
Strong technical writing, communication, and engineering judgment, including the ability to make risk-informed recommendations with incomplete or evolving information.

Nice To Haves

Experience with range safety and AFSPCMAN 91-710 requirements.
Experience developing space-rating assessments and mitigation strategies for commercial off-the-shelf components.
Experience with low Earth orbit radiation environments, associated failure modes, and mitigation strategies.
Experience developing spacecraft-level fault management, autonomous safing, mode management, or mission-recovery architectures.
Experience with fault injection, hardware-in-the-loop testing, Monte Carlo analysis, or integrated mission simulations.
Familiarity with government space mission assurance and experience supporting NASA, the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, or other U.S. government space programs.
Experience with MBSE and requirements-management tools such as Cameo, MagicDraw, SysML, DOORS, or Jama.
Active or previously held U.S. government security clearance.

Responsibilities

Lead and support spacecraft system safety assessments, hazard analyses, fault tree analyses, failure modes and effects analyses, and other safety and risk analyses.
Identify hazard causes, controls, verification methods, residual risks, single-point failures, common-cause failures, and cascading failures.
Develop fault-protection concepts and requirements, including fault detection, isolation, containment, recovery, safing, and mission-recovery strategies.
Evaluate spacecraft responses to off-nominal conditions and coordinate fault-management approaches across flight software, avionics, subsystem controllers, and mission operations.
Translate safety and mission assurance objectives into clear, verifiable system and subsystem requirements.
Evaluate spacecraft modes, autonomy logic, command paths, operational constraints, and architecture trades for safety and mission risk.
Define and support verification of hazard controls and fault-protection requirements through analysis, test, simulation, and fault injection.
Review requirements, designs, test plans, waivers, deviations, and anomaly dispositions for safety and mission assurance impacts.
Support anomaly investigations, root cause analyses, corrective actions, design reviews, readiness reviews, and customer safety reviews.
Maintain traceability between hazards, controls, requirements, design features, procedures, and verification evidence while integrating Quality Management System tracking with engineering design systems.