Systems Engineer, Mission Success & Performance - Silicon Valley

About Muon Space:
Muon Space, founded in 2021, is an end-to-end Space Systems Provider designing, building, and operating LEO satellite constellations for mission-critical data. Our integrated technology stack enables customers to optimize missions for faster time-to-orbit and superior remote sensing performance. We are dedicated to delivering Earth Intelligence for a safer and more resilient world.

The Role:
Muon seeks a Systems Engineer, Mission Success & Performance to join our Mission Engineering team. You will be a strategic architect of mission success, championing predictable mission outcomes across the entire Mission Execution process. This role is highly cross-functional, spanning the full lifecycle of mission design and execution, ensuring the technical integrity of our process as we "build the machine that builds the machines." This is not a traditional, compliance-heavy Mission Assurance role.

Responsibilities:

• Enable the Muon Mission Foundry by driving processes and architectural decisions for reliable and repeatable spacecraft production and mission operations, moving beyond legacy quality assurance paradigms.
• Partner with Mission Lead System Engineers (MLSEs) to own and track Verification & Validation (V&V) compliance, verification progress, and test coverage campaigns.
• Streamline Assembly, Integration, and Test (AI&T) workflows by identifying V&V bottlenecks and championing pragmatic "Test Like You Fly" (TLYF) standards.
• Analyze on-orbit telemetry and platform operations to maximize utility and capacity of deployed assets.
• Drive predictable outcomes by ensuring on-orbit performance matches pre-flight models and validating the accuracy of customer specifications.
• Feed on-orbit performance data back into the early-phase design of next-generation platforms.
• Focus on increasing autonomy and resilience of our platforms, driving efforts to maximize customer uptime while minimizing operator involvement.
• Act as a key technical stakeholder supporting product roadmaps for internal tooling (e.g., MuSim, power analysis, data throughput) and utilize software skills to extend baseline code.
• Make pragmatic, business-driven decisions that balance engineering pain points against direct business outcomes, prioritizing work that impacts revenue.

Qualifications:

• M.S. or higher degree in an engineering field plus 8+ years of experience in a multi-disciplinary environment, ideally with exposure to mission design, spacecraft operations, and systems architecture.
• Experience with deployed systems in high reliability, performance-critical environments.
• Proven business acumen within an engineering context, understanding the financial impact of asset capacity, uptime, and system resilience.
• Extensive experience in AI&T workflows and V&V strategies, including tracking defect escape rates and test coverage.
• Deep understanding of spacecraft autonomy, fault management architectures, and the operational integration of Flight Software (FSW) and Ground Software (GSW).
• Strong software skills (e.g., Python, Julia) with the ability to build upon existing codebases and collaborate on internal tooling roadmaps.
• Demonstrated ability to model system performance (power, thermal, data throughput) and validate models against on-orbit data.
• Excellent communication and prioritization skills, balancing technical risk with agile business constraints.
• Ability to rapidly adapt to changing roles and responsibilities in a fast-paced environment.

Nice-to-have Skills:

• Experience as a lead systems engineer or technical stakeholder in an agile environment.
• Remote sensing instrument experience (optical, multispectral, RF) and associated data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience developing, extending, or utilizing complex simulation environments.
• Familiarity with software engineering tools and processes (version control, code review).

Salary & Benefits:

• Salary Range: $142,000 - $208,000 annually.
• Competitive equity grant.
• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401k retirement plan.
• Short & long-term disability and life insurance.
• Three weeks paid vacation, 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time, and paid parental leave.

Muon Space is dedicated to creating a diverse and dynamic workforce and encourages applications from all qualified individuals. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request.