Founding Lead GNC Engineer

FOUNDING LEAD GNC ENGINEER Equity: 0.3% – 1% depending on experience ABOUT US We're a stealth team building space hardware at the edge of what's currently possible — high-stakes, flight-grade systems where the engineering bar is unforgiving and the upside is enormous. While we can't share full details yet, our founding and early engineering team includes talent from SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and Impulse Space, the group includes people who've pulled off feats almost no one else on Earth has. ROLE OVERVIEW We are seeking a Lead Founding GNC Engineer to own guidance, navigation, and control from first principles for autonomous spacecraft, across rendezvous, proximity operations, and related autonomous flight operations. This is a senior technical leadership role. You will not only define and execute the GNC architecture, but also help build the engineering team, set technical standards, mentor engineers, and establish the systems, processes, and culture required to develop flight-grade autonomous spacecraft. This is not a narrow algorithm role. You will help define the full GNC system: trajectories, sensors, actuators, flight software, testbeds, simulations, hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure, fault handling, and flight operations. You will make system-level trades across software, hardware, sensors, autonomy, avionics, propulsion, and mission design. The ideal candidate has direct experience with spacecraft GNC, autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations, trajectory design, sensor fusion, hardware testing, and technical team leadership. We recognize that very few people have all of this. What matters most is that you have exceptional fundamentals, have led real systems from concept toward flight, have managed or mentored engineers in high-performance technical environments, and can operate independently in ambiguity while making sound engineering tradeoffs. You will have direct ownership over one of the company's core technical challenges. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES - Own the GNC architecture for autonomous rendezvous, proximity operations, and related mission phases, from early design through simulation, testing, integration, and flight. - Lead the development of guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for approach, stationkeeping, proximity maneuvers, aborts, collision avoidance, and other safety-critical maneuvers. - Design and analyze trajectories for orbital operations and other relevant flight regimes, including mission trades, dispersions, constraints, and operational margins. - Provide technical leadership across GNC, autonomy, simulation, test, and flight software efforts. - Help hire, manage, mentor, and develop GNC, controls, autonomy, simulation, and related engineers as the team grows. - Establish engineering processes, review standards, technical decision-making norms, and verification discipline appropriate for flight-grade systems. - Build relative navigation and state-estimation systems using sensors such as vision, LiDAR, radar, IMUs, GNSS, star trackers, and other flight-relevant hardware. - Develop high-fidelity simulation, Monte Carlo, hardware-in-the-loop, and processor-in-the-loop test environments to validate GNC performance and robustness. - Help define requirements, interfaces, error budgets, verification plans, and fault-handling approaches for the GNC subsystem and broader vehicle. - Select, integrate, and test GNC-relevant hardware, including sensors, actuators, processors, and representative test equipment, working with vendors and internal teams as needed. - Develop and test flight GNC software in close collaboration with flight software, avionics, autonomy, propulsion, mechanical, and mission operations teams. - Contribute to system-level trades across algorithms, sensors, hardware, software, schedule, cost, reliability, and mission risk. - Work closely with the founders and early engineering team to shape the technical roadmap, engineering culture, hiring plan, and long-term GNC strategy. -