Navigation Lead Engineer for Human Landing Systems (SME)

Job description

Join Our Journey At Amentum Space Exploration Division (ASED your growth is our priority! That’s why we offer an array of exciting opportunities for your career development. From the transformative Team Lead Academy to education reimbursement, personalized mentoring, and engaging company-sponsored networking events, you have the power to shape your professional journey in a way that aligns with your aspirations. Find Your Community At the heart of our thriving business are the incredible people who make it all possible. We celebrate a vibrant array of cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. Here, we foster an environment where everyone—employees, clients, and partners alike—are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. Prioritize Your Well-Being Our extensive benefits package is designed with your health in mind. Enjoy wellness programs, paid holidays, generous time off, employee perks, and so much more. We’re here to help you achieve a harmonious balance in your life—both at work and at home. Together, We Soar Our dynamic team consists of 10 companies united in a single mission: to venture from Moon to Mars and beyond. Join us on this extraordinary adventure! The Sr Aerospace Navigation Lead Engineer stewards a team of navigation engineers across NASA centers that perform independent navigation analysis and simulation for the Human Lander System (HLS) program to asses and communicate risk to the HLS Chief Engineer and HLS commercial partners. This position will require demonstrated strong leadership and communications skills as well as strong technical background, including deep space navigation, orbit determination, on-board navigation sensor modelling, accelerometers, gyros, IMUs, radar, lidar, sensor fusion, and Kalman filtering techniques. Navigation lead will direct work of navigation team that performs high fidelity analysis of the HLS navigation architecture to assess mission risk. Description The Amentum Space Exploration Division (ASED) Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) team is a high performing group executing challenging tasks to design and integrate GN&C systems for NASA projects ranging from NASA’s Space Launch System(SLS) to NASA’s Human Lander System. We are searching for highly qualified candidates to support NASA’s Flight Dynamics Team in the Guidance, Navigation, & Mission Analysis branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. This exciting work will serve as a critical step in sending humans back to the Moon, Mars and beyond! ASED offers a partnership in which you can grow personally and professionally within a framework of strong leadership, competitive compensation, and rewarding career paths. Come join our team! Job Functions: • Lead the insight/oversight effort of the HLS GNC group (across NASA centers) with regards to all aspects of the navigation system • Leading efforts for the Modeling and simulation of landing performance analysis of HLS trajectories • Leading efforts for the integration of all relevant models into the simulation, including on-orbit estate estimation using ground tracking (e.g. range and doppler form Deep Space Network stations), on-board state estimation fusing inertial measurements with terrain relative sensing such as optical, radar, lidar measurements • Stewards trade studies to assess navigation performance under dispersed model parameters to assess uncertainty of unknown model parameters, and evaluates navigation margins • Assesses HLS commercial partner test data and partner sensors and models • Develops in-house models and/or integrates sensor models from HLS commercial providers into 6-DOF simulations such as the GeneraLized Aerospace Simulation in Simulink (GLASS) tool • Performs and stewards deep space navigation studies to assess HLS partner’s navigation performance using FreeFlyer, MONTE or JSC-Linear Covariance Tool (SIGMA) • Execute/modify existing software/scripts in Python, Matlab, Fortran, C++ • Communicates naviation margin findings to HLS Chief Engineer and HLS commercial partners • Maintains and strengthens NASA HLS cross-center navigation team • Develops and coordinates with the GNC discipline strategic planning for growing navigation expertise at MSFC Provide demonstrated (minimum of 10 years) expertise to support the Human Landing Systems (HLS) program navigation team at the level of a Subject Matter Expert, as part of the Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) discipline. Specifically, this task will entail technical leadership of a team of navigation engineers achieve safe Moon landing and return to Earth. Programming skills and mentoring abilities are highly desired. Qualifications A degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics or related field from an ABET accredited institution is required. Typical experience requirements are: • Ph.D., with minimum of 14 years of experience, • MS with at least 18 years of experience, or • BS with at least 20-25 years of experience. To be successful in this position, the applicant must be detail oriented, work independently and collaboratively, possess strong communication and interpersonal skills, and will typically possess some of the following skills: • Orbit Determination and Deep Space Navigation (Free Flyer, ODTK, MONTE, GMAT, Linear Covariance) • Radar, LIDAR experience • IMU, accelerometer, rate gyro modeling, GPS • Terrain Relative Navigation • Kalman Filtering and sensor fusion. • Dynamically model descent systems • Python, Fortran, C++ , Matlab & Simulink programming experience • Support the design, integration, and analysis of GN&C products. • Configure, conduct, and analyze 6-DOF Monte Carlo simulations. • Familiarity with Linux, Bash, and the use of computational clusters/servers • Proof of U.S. Citizenship is required. The candidate is REQUIRED to have the following skills and experiences: • Significant navigation experience • Technical leadership experience • Deep space navigation including ground tracking orbit determination or s