Senior Instrument Systems Engineer
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 instrument engineering team with a focus on infrared remote sensing instruments, driving development from concept through on-orbit operations for national security missions. You will work across many layers of technical depth, from individual components through the system level, collaborating closely with subsystem engineers, analysts, and cross-functional teams to bring instruments from concept to flight.
Requirements
- B.S, M.S., or Ph.D. in an engineering field, or equivalent experience
- 5+ years of experience working in a multi-disciplinary environment, with exposure to imaging systems, infrared remote sensing instruments, and spacecraft
- Software skills in one or more languages (e.g. Python, Julia)
- Experience with root cause analysis efforts including data analysis and testing
- Experience performing data analysis, post-processing, and test report generation
- Excellent communication, presentation, and organization skills
- Ability to obtain TS/SCI security clearance required, active clearance strongly preferred
- Experience integrating and interpreting STOP analysis results to drive instrument design trades and error budget allocations
- Experience working hands-on with precision optical and mechanical metrology equipment
- Experience supporting environmental testing (thermal stress screening, TVAC, random vibration), integrated spacecraft testing, and launch campaigns
- Experience working in cleanroom environments
Responsibilities
- Lead instrument architecture trades, define concept of operations, own radiometric model and throughput budget, drive requirements decomposition/flowdown and verification and validation (V&V) planning
- Develop and manage technical budgets, including mass, power, thermal, line-of-sight pointing/jitter, and data volume, to ensure adequate margins throughout development
- Develop comprehensive interface control documents (ICDs) across mechanical, thermal, electrical, and software interfaces, to drive a modular instrument architecture
- Support optical instrument assembly, integration, and test (AI&T) planning and implementation, including collaboration with cross-functional teams
- Champion the continuous improvement of systems engineering methodologies, tools, and best practices to enhance overall efficiency in instrument development
- Collaborate and communicate effectively with subsystem engineers and analysts, instrument and spacecraft systems engineers, AI&T and production teams, program managers, external partner teams, and other stakeholders
- Participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation to support on-orbit anomaly resolution, approximately one week per month
Benefits
- Equity compensation
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- 401k retirement plan
- Short & long term disability and life insurance
- Three weeks paid vacation for new employees
- 12 paid holidays
- Unlimited sick time
- Paid parental leave