Principal Mission Architect
South Park Commons is a community and early-stage venture firm that helps talented founders and technologists move from an idea (-1) to a company (0). It runs a no-cost, no-equity residency program for ideation and exploration, and provides $1M to $10M in funding for founders ready to build venture-scale companies.
About South Park Commons
South Park Commons operates a talent-dense community of technical founders, researchers, and domain experts who test ideas, find collaborators, and build conviction on what to build and how to build it. Its offering spans two stages: a six-month Residency with no cost or equity focused on ideation and exploration, and Funding of $1M to $10M for members ready to build venture-scale companies. Beyond capital, SPC provides learning forums on frontier topics (embodied AI, reinforcement learning, energy-efficient computing, AI in biotech), live programming with industry leaders, partner collaboration from a team of former founders and operators, social scaffolding to counter the isolation of early company building, and up to $1M in credits and perks from partners like Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, GCP, and AWS. SPC has spaces in San Francisco, New York, and Bengaluru, and its community has produced companies such as Render, Luma Labs, Pilot, Comun, Anthropic, Unit21, and Profound.
Skills
About the Role
You will join the mission development team to help direct the creation of new mission architectures. Working directly with customers, you will identify their true needs and translate them into a cost-effective, practical space mission design. You will manage a team of engineers, own top-level mission budgets, and perform a range of mission-level analyses. You will define requirements for the mission as well as for a variety of RF and optical instruments, and you will use software tools and coding to run engineering trade studies that answer key system design questions. You will apply your understanding of optical and RF instrument metrics and design trades to collaborate effectively with the instrument design team, evaluate spacecraft performance and constellation configurations, and work alongside other discipline engineers and scientists to ensure the mission meets its objectives.
Requirements
- B.S. or higher degree in a related engineering field plus 12 years of experience working with space missions
- Excellent communication, presentation, and coordination skills
- Dedication to drawing conclusions based on the most important factors and data available
- Spacecraft design experience
- Space mission design experience
- Software skills in one or more of Python, Julia, Matlab, C, C++
- Travel to the Mountain View facility to support in-person meetings, build, and test
- Excited to work in a fast-paced environment with new challenges each week
Responsibilities
- Develop a complete mission concept based on customer needs
- Perform mission-level analysis and own all top-level mission budgets
- Define requirements and design for the mission and a variety of RF and optical instruments
- Leverage software tools and writing code to explore engineering trade studies and answer system design questions
- Understand key metrics and design trades for optical and RF instruments and work effectively with the instrument design team
- Perform spacecraft performance and constellation configuration evaluation
- Collaborate with other discipline engineers and scientists to ensure the product meets objectives
Benefits
- Equity compensation
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401k retirement plan
- Short & long term disability insurance
- Life insurance
- Three weeks paid vacation for new employees
- 12 paid holidays
- Unlimited sick time
- Paid parental leave