Demo

GNC Engineer

Reflect Orbital
Hawthorne, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 7/31/2026
AVAILABLE BEFORE 10/14/2026
At Reflect, you will be expected to move fast, have a lot of ownership and, most importantly, be able to effect change. If this excites you, we are interested in hearing about your best work and accomplishments across any domain and from any points in your life.

About The Role

As a GNC Engineer, you will enable us to predict the in-orbit performance of a novel space vehicle. Your work will span from vehicle-level dynamics modeling, to propagated orbital dynamics modeling, to controller design that we can implement on flight-ready avionics. We’re looking for someone who brings “full-stack” GNC development capability to the table.

Responsibilities

  • Develop and own our 6-DOF simulation for understanding vehicle attitude, station-keeping, and orbital performance.
  • Design and implement controllers on hardware going to space by actually writing software yourself
  • Use simulation to constrain and inform ADCS design
  • Work closely with avionics engineers to have performant, reliable attitude determination and control
  • Analyze orbits, constellation designs, trajectories and attitude motion profiles to maximize vehicle service performance
  • Contribute to high-level vehicle architecture decisions
  • Support prototyping, implement controllers on prototype hardware
  • Come up with creative solutions to novel problems that surround precisely putting a spot of reflected sunlight on the ground from space

Ideal Qualifications

  • 4–6 years of professional GNC engineering experience, ideally on spacecraft or other dynamically controlled vehicles
  • Clear prior technical ownership of functioning vehicle controllers and sim (I designed and simulated the GNC for “xyz” vehicle)
  • Experience bringing up sim environments from scratch, opinionated/familiar with best practices.
  • Experience with implementing attitude control and/or estimation algorithms on spacecraft
  • Experience with verification and validation of GNC flight software in an integrated environment, leveraging 6-DOF simulation and HITL testing.

Even if you don’t meet 100% of the above qualifications, we are likely still interested in hearing from you. Hiring exceptional individuals is our #1 priority, and we believe that exceptional people often have highly unusual backgrounds.

We are also interested in carving out unique roles for unconventional people that we are excited about working with.

Benefits

Reflect Orbital’s success will hinge on our team, which is why our compensation and benefits plan is designed to reward our employees and support their families as generously as we’re able.

  • Broad choice of medical/dental/vision coverage, Reflect covers 100% of each base-policy
  • Access to HSA, FSA, and 401K
  • Unlimited paid time off, two-weeks per year encouraged
  • Healthy lunches provided daily

Equal Opportunity

Reflect Orbital is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Reflect Orbital is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

More About Reflect Orbital

Learn more about our team here.

Salary.com Estimation for GNC Engineer in Hawthorne, CA
$102,801 to $119,217
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