Senior Mission Lead 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 serve as the technical lead for a specific Muon mission, owning the end-to-end technical success from concept through on-orbit operations for some of the most demanding missions, spanning both government and high-assurance commercial programs. You'll have a big-picture view of mission execution across the full lifecycle - from initial formulation with the Business Development team, through execution with hardware and software teams, to on-orbit validation with the Operations team. You will be the primary technical interface with customers and cross-functional team leads, developing requirements and ICDs, working with other Systems Engineers on system modeling, developing test plans with AI&T teams, and identifying and reducing risk across the program with Program Managers. You'll need to right-size analysis and processes for differing levels of system maturity and risk, stay flexible with changing demands and schedules, and communicate technical content effectively to a diverse audience.
Requirements
- B.S. or higher degree in an engineering field and 10+ years of experience in complex system, mission architecture, and/or spacecraft design
- Demonstrated experience as a technical lead (e.g., Chief Engineer, Lead Systems Engineer) on at least one complex system design for a USG, DoD, IC customer, and/or commercial customer
- Experience directly interfacing with and managing expectations for external customers
- Extensive experience in system modeling, systems analysis, and running simulations
- Proven history of system integration and delivery of complex systems
- Experience in formal requirements management for a multi-disciplinary project
- Demonstrated project management skills and ability to collaborate with other engineering disciplines
- Excellent communication, presentation, and coordination skills
- Ability to rapidly change roles/responsibilities while working in a high-paced environment
Responsibilities
- Serve as the ultimate technical authority for your designated mission, leading conceptualization, design, and development
- Drive critical cross-functional technical trades and decisions to ensure mission success
- Lead the tailoring and implementation of the Muon mission design process for your designated mission
- Contribute to process refinement across all missions
- Own the translation of customer objectives and stakeholder needs into clear verifiable and actionable technical requirements
- Serve as the primary technical point of contact for your designated mission
- Manage requirements traceability, verification, and validation
- Define mission CONOPS and manage subsystem budgets such as power data mass and pointing stability
- Identify and mitigate internal and external mission risks and communicate impacts
- Assess and coordinate design changes across disciplines throughout the program lifecycle
- Lead design test readiness and flight readiness reviews
- Monitor on-orbit spacecraft and data pipelines to ensure mission success
- Foster collaboration with and provide technical direction to systems hardware software data ground segment and operations teams
- Contribute general systems engineering expertise and support to other Muon missions
- Deputize for other Mission Lead Systems Engineers as needed
- Contribute to continuous improvement of engineering processes tools and methodologies
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