What are the responsibilities and job description for the Lead Systems Engineer, CART Project position at Intuitive Machines?
Houston Texas
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.
About The Position
The Lead Systems Engineer will provide technical leadership and full lifecycle systems engineering support for projects under the JETS II contract at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. This role drives concept development, design, integration, verification, validation, and mission operations while ensuring alignment with mission objectives. The ideal candidate brings strong expertise in systems integration, requirements development, and interface management within complex aerospace environments, and will mentor junior engineers, lead technical reviews, and collaborate closely with NASA stakeholders to ensure cohesive system-level performance.
Responsibilities
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.
About The Position
The Lead Systems Engineer will provide technical leadership and full lifecycle systems engineering support for projects under the JETS II contract at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. This role drives concept development, design, integration, verification, validation, and mission operations while ensuring alignment with mission objectives. The ideal candidate brings strong expertise in systems integration, requirements development, and interface management within complex aerospace environments, and will mentor junior engineers, lead technical reviews, and collaborate closely with NASA stakeholders to ensure cohesive system-level performance.
Responsibilities
- Lead system architecture definition, requirements decomposition, and design integration across multiple engineering disciplines.
- Develop and manage system specifications, interface control documents (ICDs), concepts of operations documents and requirements/verification plans consistent with NASA standards.
- Coordinate design reviews, technical interchange meetings (TIMs), and readiness reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, etc.).
- Oversee the development and maintenance of requirements and configurations within formal data management systems.
- Support the planning and execution of test and verification activities, ensuring end-to-end system validation.
- Serve as the primary systems engineering interface to project and task order management, providing technical insight into cost, schedule, and risk.
- Collaborate with subsystem leads, project managers, and NASA counterparts to resolve design and integration challenges.
- Lead and mentor junior systems engineers in applying best practices, analytical tools, and modern systems engineering methods.
- Contribute to continuous improvement of systems engineering frameworks and knowledge sharing across teams.
- Contribute to planning efforts with project management to support cost, scope and schedule objectives
- Lead cross-coordination across multidisciplinary engineering discipline groups, inter and intra division and outside entities to coalesce an integrated product.
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering or a related technical field; a master’s degree is preferred.
- Typically requires 10–15 years of relevant systems engineering experience, including at least 3 years in a technical leadership or lead engineer role.
- Demonstrated expertise in requirements management, interface definition, and verification planning on complex technical programs.
- Strong understanding of NASA systems engineering processes and standards, including NPR 7123.1.
- Familiarity with Pre-Phase A project development activities.
- Proficiency with systems engineering tools such as DOORS, Cameo, or other MBSE platforms.
- Excellent communication, organizational, and leadership abilities.
- U.S. Citizenship required due to government contract constraints.
- Experience supporting NASA programs, projects or comparable government engineering contracts, specifically
- Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility (EHP), Moon 2 Mars (M2M), Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) and Human Landing Systems (HLS)
- Master’s degree in systems engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
- Expertise in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), Digital Thread, and requirements traceability techniques.
- Expertise in Jama Connect
- Familiarity with modern development and execution frameworks (e.g., Agile Systems Engineering, INCOSE SE Handbook, Lean MBSE, and hybrid adaptive approaches).
- PMP, INCOSE CSEP, or equivalent professional certification.
- Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary teams and drive collaboration across technical and programmatic boundaries.