Principal System Engineer - Mission Planning / Flight Dynamics Lead

Principal System Engineer - Mission Planning / Flight Dynamics Lead

Job Locations US-VA-Reston

Job ID 2025-4492

Category Engineering Worker Category Regular Full-Time[F]

Company Overview

Iridium is an award-winning and innovative satellite communications company with bragging rights to the only network that offers voice and data connectivity anywhere in the world. For over 20 years, Iridium's unique network and services have supported critical communications needs for individuals, businesses, and the evolving Internet of Things.

At Iridium, we understand the importance of staying connected and the limitations of traditional communications networks. People across the globe, including first responders, humanitarians, global militaries, scientific researchers, and lone workers, as well as ships, aircraft and remote operations all rely on Iridium to stay connected. We take our responsibility for providing these essential communications very seriously and pride ourselves on offering a reliable lifeline when needed. Likewise, Iridium is committed to providing an exciting and innovative workplace, where employees are challenged to think outside the box and collaborate on new, bold ideas and solutions. Our talented teams are passionate about their work and the impact our company makes around the world. Iridium fosters an empowering and inclusive culture that allows employees to genuinely be their best selves. We are looking for others who want to join this truly unique company that celebrates our employees and provides the opportunity to truly make a difference in the world.

What We're Looking For:

If you are passionate about space and deploying disruptive space technology, you'll be excited about the Principal System Engineer, Mission Planning & Flight Dynamics Lead position for a Space Development Agency (SDA) project. As a member of the System Engineering team, you'll be responsible for managing multiple activities and projects, including those with cross-functional teams, to deliver customer-driven Mission Planning and Flight Dynamics artifacts. In this role, you will work alongside a team of Engineers to build and deliver a state-of-the-art Mission Management System that wows our customers. To thrive, you'll need a breadth of knowledge in Mission Planning and Flight Dynamics system development and hardware interfaces. As a lead, you'll be responsible for managing multiple activities to support system architecture and design, software development, integration and test, and operations regarding Mission Planning and Flight Dynamics areas of responsibilities

What You'll Do:

Lead the architecture and design to schedule all satellite and ground resources to accomplish mission objectives, ensuring activity deconfliction, resource allocation, and determining optimal load balancing for traffic on the satellite network

Lead the architecture and design for the creation, validation, and distribution of all necessary products for the network including satellite and ground site schedules, antenna tracking files, acquisition tables, satellite pointing vectors, and orbital event files

Lead the architecture and design to monitor and maintain long term constellation trending, relative RAAN rate progression, frozen orbit stability, and cross-link pointing performance

Work independently to develop combinatorial optimization scheduling algorithms for make-before-break continuous coverage scheduling

Develop and maintain system-level architecture and design documentation, ensuring alignment with project requirements, industry standards, and best practices

Perform requirements analysis, definition, decomposition, and management for Space and Ground Segments

Conduct risk assessments and mitigation planning for system design and development activities, identifying potential risks, developing contingency plans, and implementing risk mitigation strategies

Inform anomaly and contingency resolution efforts

What You'll Need to Succeed:

Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering or related field

10+ years of relevant experience in Satellite Operations and Development

Breadth of knowledge in satellite operations, orbital dynamics, and satellite subsystems

Proficient in LINUX operating systems and possess general programming capabilities

Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey products, deliverables, analyses, and/or issues clearly and confidently, and recognize and adapt to different communication techniques

Can easily build meaningful relationships with others, including senior leadership outside of your own department, and is comfortable providing constructive feedback to your team members and management

Be able to analyze a situation or problem, generate effective solutions, and see those solutions through to completion

Must possess the creativity and resourcefulness needed to make reliable decisions and determine methods on new assignments

Can thrive in a dynamic environment by handling multiple tasks and managing shifting priorities

Be proactive in sharing knowledge you've learned with others

Things That Would be Great if You Brought to the Table:

Master's in Aerospace Engineering

We'll also need you to:

Be able to travel up to 5%

Be a U.S. Citizen

Work Environment:

This position primarily works in an office setting and is largely sedentary with the majority of the position working with a computer. The role typically requires the use of basic office equipment such as a phone, video, computer, keyboard, mouse, and printer.

Iridium is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.

Full-Time