GNC Trajectory Engineer, Space

Gnc Trajectory Engineer, Space

Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century's most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril's family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.

About The Team

Anduril's Space team is dedicated to expanding our AI-powered capabilities into the final frontier, enhancing Space Domain Awareness, Space Control, and Command and Control for U.S. military and allied partners. We're developing fully integrated hardware and software systems, including Lattice for Space Missions and modular payloads, to address growing threats in space and ensure our Guardians maintain a decisive advantage in this contested warfighting domain.

About The Job

As a GNC (Guidance, Navigation & Control) Engineer (Trajectory and Guidance) for our Space team, you contribute to the understanding and design of the guidance subsystem and offline simulation tools while maintaining a working knowledge of all satellite GNC subsystems. The successful candidate will synthesize and/or implement trajectory guidance algorithms, build simulations to solve key mission needs, use the simulations to help craft mission solutions, migrate the algorithms into flight code, and verify proper performance in the flight baseline. The GNC engineering team will work closely with related teams, including Systems, Flight Software, Mission Operations, and Ground Software. The GNC Engineer will contribute to algorithm design, truth and physics modeling, mission design, constellation design, simulation and analysis for a wide variety of spacecraft and space missions across all regimes that could include Reentry and RPOD. The GNC Engineer supports successful implementation, validation and GNC operations of Anduril's fleet of spacecraft. This role is directly tied to ongoing, funded programs within Anduril's Space Business Line. The programs require building and fielding a resilient, software-defined spacecraft systems across numerous mission threads. We work with mission partners and customers to deploy reliable and robust capabilities on operationally-relevant fielding timelines to meet complex challenges across the DOD and IC.

What You'll Do

• Support algorithm selection and design for space trajectories that inform mission and constellation design.
• Help field simulation solutions that show mission closure to key customer requirements.
• Support Anduril Mission Simulation and Lattice for Space capability enhancement.
• Field your solutions to spacecraft GNC software and hardware subsystems for various spacecraft efforts in all orbital regimes and work closely with bus providers for successful implementation.
• Develop modern, software-defined approaches to autonomous spacecraft operations with maneuvering capabilities to successfully accomplish mission objectives.
• Develop appropriate test plans and procedures to validate the GNC system during ground checkout, on-orbit commissioning and operations.
• Collaborate across multiple teams to plan, build, and test complex functionality.
• Coordinate with end-users, other operators and customers to turn needs into features while balancing user experience with engineering constraints.
• Support challenging schedules during ground testing, launch windows and on-orbit operations of the spacecraft systems.
• Design of flight software, algorithms, and simulation products.
• Development of spacecraft autonomy tools for dynamic space operations.
• Test process development and execution.
• Define automated fault detection and responses.
• Provide hardware-in-the-loop and monte-carlo simulation capabilities.

Required Qualifications

• Strong engineering background from industry or school, ideally in areas/fields such as Astrodynamics, Aerospace Engineering, Dynamics and Controls Engineering, Computer Science, or other engineering degree.
• Ability to quickly understand and navigate complex systems and detailed requirements.
• Experience with orbital mechanics and resident space object tracking capabilities.
• Familiarity with rendezvous proximity operations and docking, orbital mechanics with propulsive spacecraft, spacecraft attitude determination and controls.
• Strong knowledge of spacecraft dynamics, orbital mechanics, and control theory.
• Clear communication and organizational skills including documentation and training material.
• Must be eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Top Secret security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong Astrodynamics background applied into new or existing simulation systems.
• Experience with Matlab, Python, Go, C++ and/or Linux systems.
• Experience developing ground-up simulation frameworks for rapid mission prototyping, constellation and CONOP design.
• A desire to work on critical simulation and software designs for the space domain.
• Experience testing and delivering algorithms for simulation and flight environments.
• Experience with genetic algorithms, machine learning, AI, and reinforcement learning algorithms to support GNC operations.
• Exposure to US satellite operations policy and constraints for relevant mission threads in all orbits.