System Architect

Stoke Space • Kent, WA

2d • Onsite

About The Position

At Stoke, we believe a thriving space economy will enable a vibrant, sustainable, and equitable future here on Earth. That is why we’re building Nova, our fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle. Designed for daily flight, Nova tackles the core challenges of space transportation by reducing cost, increasing availability, and improving reliability. By radically lowering launch costs and increasing flight cadence, we’re helping create a truly scalable space industry. Our team is mission-driven, collaborative, and empowered to take ownership of their work. If you want to work alongside some of the most dedicated and talented people on Earth, we’d love to have you join us. As a System Architect, you will be a core member of a small and agile team focused on developing architecture concepts and system requirements for future iterations of the Nova launch system. You will translate customer objectives and business goals into feasible technical concepts. You will perform first-order analysis and trade studies to evaluate concepts and downselect for further development. You will perform first-order analysis and develop assumptions across a broad range of technical disciplines to make estimates of mass, power, cost, and performance despite limited information and significant uncertainty. In collaboration with the Nova product development teams, you will support the implementation of your architecture concepts into real hardware, learn lessons from integrated testing and flight operations, and translate those lessons into future architecture improvements. You must be ready to stay focused, move fast, self-direct, and learn on the fly.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering or similar field
• 10+ years of experience in an engineering role on a complex product requiring high performance, high reliability, and a rapid development process
• Exceptional command of fundamentals in one or more of the following engineering disciplines: aerospace structures, mechanisms, propulsion systems, avionics, software, or flight dynamics
• Ability to understand and apply fundamentals for first-order analysis across all disciplines
• Ability to move quickly and make decisions in an environment of uncertainty
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Ability to lead and follow

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree or PhD in aerospace engineering or similar field
• Experience on a launch vehicle and/or spacecraft program from early concept definition through flight test

Responsibilities

• Listen to customer input and business goals, then develop conceptual system architecture, concept of operations (ConOps), and functional capabilities which meet customer and business objectives
• Define system requirements to meet functional capabilities and ConOps, define product breakdown, and decompose requirements to lower-level products
• Quickly make assumptions, perform first-order analysis to validate those assumptions, and generate estimations of system and component performance based on limited information
• Define system-level approaches to reliability, performance margin management, and incremental development of capabilities, then work to maintain commonality in those approaches across the launch system throughout the lifecycle
• Support the products that you help architect through the full lifecycle including detailed design, integration, test, and operations
• Provide cross-system technical insight and subject matter expertise as needed to identify and mitigate risks that arise during the product lifecycle

Benefits

• Equity – We are pleased to offer equity in the form of stock options to all 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
• 4 weeks’ Paid Time Off
• Holidays – 10 days (including an end-of-year closure)
• Paid 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