Orbit Determination and Navigation Engineer
Level II,III
Littleton, CO; Houston, TX; Remote in AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, MD, OH, TX, UT, VA, WA, DC
About Intuitive Machines:
Intuitive Machines is an innovative and cutting-edge space company making cislunar space accessible to both public and private customers. Our mission is to further science and exploration, communications, and economic progress from the Earth to the Moon and beyond. With multiple NASA lunar missions in development and additional private missions on our manifest, we pride ourselves in supporting NASA, our customers, and the nation in paving the way to return humans to the surface of the Moon. Our world-class team includes experts in all aspects of spacecraft subsystems design, development, and test, on-orbit operations, and safety.
KinetX Aerospace, a subsidiary of Intuitive Machines, is a trusted engineering services and product company specializing in space navigation, flight dynamics, mission operations, communications, and systems engineering. As the first private company qualified by NASA for deep-space navigation, KinetX has supported some of the world’s most complex planetary missions, including MESSENGER, New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx, Lucy, and LunaH-Map. With a proven record spanning Earth-orbiting, suborbital, commercial, international, and deep-space missions, KinetX provides end-to-end expertise from early mission design through flight operations. Its core capabilities include navigation and mission systems development, optical navigation, orbit determination, maneuver design, trajectory optimization, and constellation design and maintenance. Combined with Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft, network, and mission-operations capabilities, KinetX helps build, connect, and operate resilient space infrastructure for sustained exploration, advanced deep-space constellations, and communications networks.
About the Position:
We are seeking an Orbit Determination (OD) and Navigation Engineer at Level II (Professional Engineer) or Level III (Lead) to join the OD group within FDI. Level II engineers independently execute routine OD analyses and navigation products. Level III engineers lead assigned OD efforts, develop analysis approaches, and guide others in technical execution and quality. Placement will reflect demonstrated competencies.
Responsibilities:
- Support daily OD solutions and trajectory reconstructions, covariance analyses, tracking data quality assessments, and evaluation of forces affecting spacecraft trajectories.
- Produce trajectory updates that support maneuver design, reference trajectories, and science observations.
- Independently execute routine OD analyses and generate navigation products using approved tools.
- Configure estimation runs, assess residuals and covariance outputs, and evaluate solution behavior.
- Plan assigned analyses, identify data and resource needs, estimate effort, assess risks, and coordinate schedules.
- Test more complex solutions and troubleshoot issues, seeking guidance when needed.
- Develop and maintain OD scripts and workflows, verify results, and document changes.
- Prepare technical reports, communicate findings to mission teams and customers, and ensure assigned products meet applicable quality standards.
Additional Level III responsibilities
• Lead complex OD analyses and product development for assigned efforts.
• Define estimation strategies and validation methods, diagnose residual and covariance issues, and establish quality checks that reduce solution risks.
• Serve as lead liaison with mission operations, customers, and engineering teams. Manage priorities, effort, schedules, and budgets across multiple projects and report progress and issues to management.
• Improve OD methods and software workflows, establish test approaches, review code, and guide other engineers.
• Oversee technical documentation and anticipate problems affecting mission objectives.
Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or a related discipline.
- GPA of 3.5 or higher on a 4.0 scale.
- Clear technical writing and verbal communication skills, attention to detail, and the ability to collaborate with engineering and mission operations teams.
- U.S. citizenship.
- Ability to independently execute routine OD analyses using approved methods and tools, including estimation run setup, tracking data selection, residual review, covariance assessment, and checks of solution reasonableness.
- Ability to troubleshoot analysis issues, evaluate alternatives, prioritize work against deadlines, and recognize when to escalate an issue for deeper investigation.
- Experience developing, modifying, and maintaining analysis scripts and software workflows, with sound version control, testing, configuration management, and documentation practices.
- Working knowledge of interplanetary navigation and applicable aerospace quality standards, with proficiency in Python and the ability to prepare technical reports and communicate analysis results to internal and external stakeholders.
- Specialized OD knowledge and demonstrated ability to lead complex analyses, develop estimation and validation approaches, and interpret residuals, covariance, and solution behavior to support operational decisions.
- Experience leading technical work and guiding engineers, conducting quality and code reviews, and improving analysis methods and software reliability, repeatability, and traceability.
- Ability to anticipate technical risks, coordinate customers and cross-functional teams, manage multiple project schedules and budgets, and oversee technical documentation and management reporting.
Preferred Requirements:
- Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or a related discipline.
- Coursework, research, or work experience in two or more of statistical orbit determination, estimation, astrodynamics, statistics, linear control theory, or Kalman filtering.
- Familiarity with deep space mission operations, deep space OD processes, tracking data types, optical navigation image processing, or flight path control.
- Experience with macOS or Linux environments and additional programming languages such as C, C++, Perl, MATLAB, or Fortran.
Additional requirements
- Availability to travel and work extended hours for team meetings and operations support, as needed.
- Willingness to cross-train in other deep space navigation disciplines to support the KinetX multi-mission workforce.
US EEO Statement:
Intuitive Machines is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.
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