Full-Time
IT Solutions Architect 5
United Launch Alliance
1,001-5,000 employees
Space launch provider for satellites and payloads
Compensation Overview
$158.5k - $264.1k/yr
No H1B Sponsorship
Centennial, CO, USA
In Person
US Citizenship Required
Bachelor's
 Sales & Solution Engineering |
|---|
- Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university.
- Minimum of 8 years of related work experience.
- Extensive experience with enterprise Windows environments, including server platforms, architecture, administration concepts, and core Microsoft infrastructure services.
- Strong knowledge of AWS Services and Microsoft Azure services related to compute, networking, storage, monitoring, and identity, with experience in hybrid infrastructure integrating on-premises systems with cloud services.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, along with strong collaboration skills across infrastructure, security, network, application, engineering, operations, and business stakeholders.
- Proven consulting mindset with the ability to listen well, ask good questions, and translate needs into practical solutions.
- Experience producing architecture documentation, technical standards, diagrams, and implementation guidance.
- Hands-on experience with automation and scripting using tools or languages such as PowerShell, Python, Bash, Terraform, or Ansible.
- Familiarity with monitoring, logging, backup, disaster recovery, patching, and operational readiness considerations.
- Ability to assess architectural tradeoffs involving cost, complexity, security, and operational impact, and to balance strategic thinking with practical implementation realities.
- Ability to influence technical direction without relying solely on formal authority, with professional presence and the ability to handle disagreement constructively.
- Consistent ownership, follow-through, accountability, and sound judgment in complex technical environments.
- Solid understanding of infrastructure design principles including scalability, resiliency, recoverability, supportability, and performance.
- Optional: security clearance/ITAR requirement as part of job
- Design, guide, and advance enterprise solutions across Windows infrastructure, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services.
- Work across on-premises and cloud environments to translate business and technical requirements into secure, scalable, supportable, and cost-conscious architecture decisions.
- Increase Organizational Scale & Launch Rate
- Be the premier launch provider for United States Government
- Drive down organizational costs
- Design and guide infrastructure and cloud solutions across Windows Server platforms, Azure, and AWS.
- Translate business requirements into secure, scalable, reliable, and supportable architecture designs.
- Partner with infrastructure, security, network, application, and operations teams to develop end-to-end technical solutions.
- Lead or contribute to architecture reviews, design sessions, technical standards, and implementation planning.
- Evaluate current-state environments and recommend improvements for resiliency, performance, security, supportability, and cost optimization.
- Support hybrid-cloud and multicloud architectures integrating on-premises systems with Azure and AWS services.
- Create and maintain architecture diagrams, design documentation, standards, and technical decision records.
- Drive infrastructure patterns for automation, standardization, and operational maturity.
- Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance across implementation, troubleshooting, and production support.
- Participate in technology evaluations and recommend tools, platforms, and architectural direction.
- Collaborate with operations teams to ensure solutions are deployable, monitorable, maintainable, and supportable.
- Identify technical debt, architectural risks, and lifecycle concerns, and recommend practical remediation strategies.
- Background in enterprise environments spanning both Windows and Linux infrastructure.
- Proven support of operational cloud workloads in production.
- Involvement in infrastructure modernization, cloud migration, or platform transformation initiatives.
- Hands-on work with infrastructure as code, configuration management, or platform automation at scale.
- Knowledge of identity, access, monitoring, and security controls across Azure and AWS.
- Participation in governance, standards, or architecture review boards.
- Demonstrated mentoring of senior engineers or delivery of technical leadership across teams.
- Exposure to regulated, security-sensitive, or mission-critical environments.
- Possession of relevant certifications such as Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Administrator Associate, or AWS Certified Solutions Architect.
- Design experience with landing zones, networking patterns, and governance controls in Azure and AWS.
- Expertise in Windows-based identity and access services within hybrid environments.
- Proficiency in infrastructure automation using PowerShell, Terraform, Ansible, or Python.
- Understanding of virtualization, backup and recovery, monitoring platforms, and enterprise systems management.
- Awareness of cloud cost optimization, resource standardization, and operational design principles.
- Familiarity with containers, Kubernetes, or platform engineering patterns where applicable.
- Capability to perform cross-cloud comparisons and service mapping between Azure and AWS.
- Capacity to drive clarity in ambiguous or complex technical situations.
- Strong coaching mindset with a willingness to mentor engineers and developing architects.
- Skill in challenging assumptions respectfully to improve design quality through thoughtful review.
- Collaborative approach with operations teams to ensure solutions are both well-designed and operationally supportable.
- Composure and credibility during escalations, design debates, and implementation risk discussions.
- Consistent ability to build trust through technical depth, humility, and reliability.
United Launch Alliance is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin providing launch services for government, national security, and commercial satellites. Its main products are the Vulcan Centaur and Atlas V rockets, launched from Florida and California to deliver payloads from NASA science missions to national security satellites. What sets ULA apart is its combined Atlas and Delta heritage spanning over 100 years and more than 150 consecutive successful launches since 2006. The goal is to provide dependable, precise access to space.
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
Grant
Total Funding
$63.3M
Headquarters
La Veta, Colorado
Founded
2006
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- ULA launched Amazon Leo LA-05 on April 4, 2026, delivering 29 satellites.
- NASA’s sole-source Centaur V award secures production through Artemis V, targeting 2028.
- ULA still has at least 70 backlog missions, supporting future launch revenue.
What critics are saying
- Space Force paused Vulcan military launches after the February 12, 2026 booster failure.
- SpaceX already won diverted national security missions, pressuring ULA’s 2026 manifest and pricing.
- If Amazon Leo shifts Vulcan launches to Falcon 9, Vulcan’s business case collapses.
What makes United Launch Alliance unique
- ULA’s Atlas V and Vulcan achieved 100% payload delivery despite February 2026 anomalies.
- NASA chose ULA’s Centaur V for Artemis IV and V on March 6, 2026.
- ULA holds deep U.S. government integration expertise across Space Force, NASA, and Amazon Leo.
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Benefits
Flexible Work Hours
Living Stipend
Paid Vacation
Networking Opportunities
Competitive Pay
Professional Development
Company News
Space Force launch order. SpaceX has won $1.6 billion in orders from the U.S. Space Force to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions through 2027. The rockets will carry Pentagon satellites built to detect and target airborne objects. The service announced the award on Wednesday. Key takeaways. * The Space Force assigned 18 Falcon 9 missions to SpaceX across two task orders worth $1.6 billion, all flying from Vandenberg Space Force Base by the end of 2027. * The payloads support the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, which tracks airborne threats and relays near real-time data to U.S. forces. * SpaceX has now collected at least $7 billion in Pentagon contracts this year as the Trump administration builds out its Golden Dome missile defense shield. Both task orders fall under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 program. That is the flagship procurement vehicle where SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and other approved American launch firms compete for individual mission assignments rather than fixed allocations. Lane 1 handles the lighter end of the military manifest: easier orbits, smaller payloads, missions that can tolerate a little schedule risk. Lane 2 covers the heavy, demanding flights. Splitting the program this way was meant to pull commercial operators into national security work. Speed was the headline inside the Space Force. Officials described an "unprecedented two-month acquisition timeline" from identifying the requirement to signing the award, according to acquisition official Eric Zarybnisky. The service has spent years trying to buy spacecraft and launches faster. What the satellites do. The Space Based Sensing and Targeting programme puts spacecraft in orbit to spot and follow aircraft, drones and other moving objects, then pipe that picture down to commanders quickly. SpaceX already won more than $6 billion in late May to build satellites for that effort and a companion communications constellation. Now it flies them too. Eighteen launches in roughly two years means about one Falcon 9 leaving California every month. No other operator can promise that cadence. The company has spent years lifting its flight rate, and its expanded launch capacity at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg exists precisely to absorb work like this. The competition problem. SpaceX keeps a wide lead over its rivals for Pentagon business, and some lawmakers have said openly that the Department of Defense leans too hard on one vendor. Space Force officials answer that they want more industry activity and more competition, not less. The alternatives are having a rough year. ULA, the Boeing and Lockheed Martin venture certified to launch Pentagon satellites, remains stuck in a months-long technical investigation into a faulty booster separation system on its Vulcan rocket. Blue Origin, meanwhile, is still working toward the cadence its larger New Glenn plans require. When two of three approved providers cannot fly on demand, task orders drift to the one that can. Golden Dome money. The award lands inside a much bigger project. Golden Dome, the roughly $185 billion multi-year missile shield the administration has been assembling, depends heavily on orbital sensors and the rockets that put them there. SpaceX occupies a central seat in that architecture, which is why its Pentagon tally has climbed past $7 billion in a single year. The original Golden Dome plan called for hundreds of satellites forming a detection and interception layer over North America. The award also arrives weeks after the Space Force lifted the spending ceiling on Lane 1 by more than $11 billion, and this is the first task order issued under that newly expanded contract vehicle. Washington is not just buying launches. It is buying an industrial base capable of putting a large sensing constellation in orbit quickly, and it is paying a premium for schedule certainty at a moment when schedule certainty is scarce. Every task order that goes to the fastest provider makes the dependency the lawmakers worry about a little deeper. There is a wider shift underneath the paperwork. Military space used to run on a handful of exquisite, expensive satellites launched rarely. It now runs on large numbers of cheaper spacecraft replaced often, which turns launch cadence into a strategic asset rather than a logistics detail. Officials framed the sensing mission itself in those terms, calling the ability to track airborne objects from orbit and pass data across the joint force vital to national defense. Other countries have noticed the economics. China recovered an orbital-class booster at sea this month, its own bid to lower launch costs for a fast-growing satellite fleet.
"Project Quartz" satellite ground station network teased by Blue Origin president. Blue Origin president hypes ground station expansion, scaling up company's terrestrial mission operations capability April 21, 2026 Jeff Bezos' satellite firm Blue Origin looks set to develop its own portfolio of ground station sites to support its upcoming fleet of satellites. Tory Bruno, president of the Blue National Security Group within Blue Origin, has shared AI-modified images depicting early construction efforts for "Project Quartz" on X, a brand new ground station and operation center network planning the globe being rolled out by the company. - TeraWave The imagery appears to depict a very large white radome, and another showing a concrete base before an ocean view, which he confirmed to be on an island in Bermuda in the replies. "We are looking at an environment with 10,000s of spacecraft in orbit," Bruno explained in another reply. "Mission operations is (sic) suddenly different. We can't drive them from the ground the way we used to." Bruno described Project Quartz as a Blue Origin initiative and said Project Quartz would serve the company's TeraWave constellation. Blue Origin's TeraWave fleet could comprise more than 5,400 satellites in low and medium Earth orbits. The company is also planning an orbital data center deployment that could total tens of thousands of machines in the future. Salvatore "Tory" Bruno joined Blue Origin at the turn of the year, having served as the president and CEO of United Launch Alliance (ULA) from August 2014 to December 2025, having worked with Lockheed before that. Since arriving, he has championed Blue Origin's heavy-lift and orbital logistics aspirations. The company has been awarded launch contracts under the US Space Force's National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract in 2025, for which it saw $2.4 billion. On April 19, Blue Origin launched its New Glenn rocket from Launch Complex 36, successfully reaching orbit, however, its payload, AST SpaceMobile's Bluebird 7, was subsequently placed in an "off-nominal orbit", according to another X.com post made at 2.40pm, later that day AST declared the satellite would be unable to "sustain operations" meaning the satellite would need to be deorbited. The high-profile incident resulted in AST SpaceMobile's stock dropping 15 percent the same day, undoing much of the growth the stock had seen this year in a single day. On April 20th, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp made a statement, once again on X.com, stating "While we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn't deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects." He explained one of New Glenn's BE-3U egines didn't produce sufficient thrust to reach target orbit. Amazon, the cloud and e-commerce company set up by Blue Origin founder Bezos, has been expanding its own satellite fleet and infrastructure under the Amazon Leo brand. In December last year, Amazon Leo, formerly Project Kuiper, announced plans to install more than 300 ground stations to keep up with the expansion of its low-Earth orbit constellation. Following recent approvals with the FCC, Amazon is able to expand to a total of 7,700 satellites, up from the 3,236 agreed in 2020. As of the April 15 United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V launch, the constellation comprises 241 active satellites. As of March 2026, SpaceX's Starlink constellation surpassed the 10,000 active satellite mark. Multiple users accused Bruno of using AI to doctor the image, a claim he acknowledged, explaining that "someone's car" was in the shot and had to be taken out, warping the entire image. Another user accused the revelation of being boring, to which Bruno promised next time he would "include a shark with lasers." More in telecoms & 5G.
Atlas V rocket launches its heaviest-ever payload, sending 29 Amazon internet satellites to orbit. By Mike Wall last updated 3 hours ago Liftoff of the LA-05 mission occurred at 1:46 a.m. ET on Saturday (April 4). A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket launched its heaviest-ever payload on Saturday morning (April 4). The Atlas V lifted off Saturday at 1:46 a.m. EDT (0546 GMT) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying 29 satellites for the Amazon Leo broadband constellation to orbit. Together, those spacecraft weigh 18 tons, according to ULA. The Atlas V successfully deployed all 29 into their target orbit, according to ULA. United Launch Alliance advances @AmazonLeo constellation with successful Leo 5 launch. Atlas V precisely delivered 29 broadband satellites dedicated to connecting the world.https://t.co/kop0naHlrH pic.twitter.com/Y7XA0E732JApril 4, 2026 The Amazon Leo megaconstellation, previously known as Project Kuiper, will eventually consist of about 3,200 satellites in low Earth orbit. It's Amazon's answer to SpaceX's Starlink network, which beams internet service down from more than 10,000 satellites (and counting). Amazon Leo is still in its early stages; just 241 of the spacecraft have reached orbit to date over the course of nine launches (not counting a 2023 liftoff that sent up two prototype satellites). The Atlas V has now flown five of those operational missions. Three employed SpaceX's Falcon 9, and the other one used Arianespace's Ariane 6 heavy lifter. Saturday's launch, which Amazon called LA-05, was the first Atlas V mission to loft 29 Amazon Leo satellites; the others carried 27 of the spacecraft. Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
NASA launches Artemis II in further step toward a Moon return. NASA launched Artemis II, its first crewed mission under the Artemis program, on Wednesday evening. The mission will test the Orion spacecraft's life support capabilities on live astronauts for the first time as the space agency prepares for its planned crewed expeditions to the Moon. The mission launched at 6:35 p.m. EDT from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the second successful launch for the Boeing-built Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket after the precursor Artemis I mission in 2022. Four astronauts are aboard for the mission: Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, and Victor Glover of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. The spacecraft had a communications issue about 51 minutes into the flight, in which the ground support was not able to receive communications from the crew, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a post-launch press conference Wednesday evening. It was a temporary, partial loss of communications, in which the crew still recieved uplink from the ground, he said. The issue took place during a handover between NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) satellites. Communications have been restored and NASA is working the issue. SLS carried the Orion spacecraft, built by NASA and Lockheed Martin, on its way to a 10-day-long mission in the vicinity of the Moon. The crew will evaluate Orion's performance, test its radiation shelter, and practice emergency procedures. Throughout the mission, Orion will fly two elliptical orbits around the Earth to test its systems before heading into a 24-hour orbit around the Moon. The crew will take control of the craft for around two hours to gather data and experience for the upcoming Artemis III mission, according to NASA's reference guide for Artemis II. While boomeranging around the Moon, the astronauts will produce photographs and audio recordings of their observations and experiences for historical documentation and scientific analysis. They may become the first humans to see certain areas of the Moon's far side, depending on the time of the launch, according to NASA. After the mission's end, Orion will splash down in the Pacific Ocean and be retrieved. "Artemis II is the start of something bigger than any one mission. It marks our return to the Moon, not just to visit, but to eventually stay on our Moon Base, and lays the foundation for the next giant leaps ahead," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. Outside of the Artemis mission, SLS is also carrying cubesats developed by Argentina, Germany, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia's space agencies. SLS will release the four cubesats in a High-Earth Orbit, where they will maneuver into their intended orbits and begin collecting data for their respective missions. NASA is working with Amentum for ground, prelaunch, launch, and recovery operations. Northrop Grumman, the lead contractor for boosters, built the twin solid rocket boosters on SLS alongside NASA engineers. L3Harris Technologies built four RS-25 engines for the launch platform. Telodyne Brown Engineering developed SLS' launch vehicle stage adapter and United Launch Alliance collaborated with Boeing to create its interim cryogenic propulsion stages. NASA will air 24/7 mission coverage on its YouTube channel. "Today, people around the world share this generation's Moon moment and celebrate the Artemis II crew and the extraordinary team supporting them. All of us at Space Foundation congratulate the crew, the entire Artemis team, and the remarkable people whose dedication has once again made history and brought humanity one step closer to the Moon," Space Foundation CEO Heather Pringle said in a statement applauding the mission.
United Launch Alliance tapped to provide replacement Artemis stages after revamp. Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Mar 10, 2026 Subscribe. NASA moved quickly to tap United Launch Alliance to help fill in the blank space the agency created when it decided to alter its Artemis program's future launches. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman had announced Feb. 27 that instead of developing a larger version of the Space Launch System rocket, which would been called the Block 1B for the fourth and fifth flights of the agency's moon program, it was opting to stick with what he called "essentially a near block one configuration." That means that while it would no longer support the Exploration Upper Stage that was being manufactured by Boeing, "due to eroding cost and schedule delays NASA now requires an alternate upper stage," the agency stated. Instead, the agency posted a task order Friday stating that it planned to award ULA a contract to supply versions of its Centaur V upper stage, which is also used on that company's new Vulcan rockets. The Centaur V is similar to the upper stage being used on Artemis I, III and III. That stage is called the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, which was also provided by ULA. The company cannot produce more, however, as the ICPS was related to the now-retired Delta IV rocket. NASA, though, cited ULA as the best chance to develop its Centaur V in time for Artemis IV and V's 2028 launch target date. For ULA's part, the company had posted it "looks forward to continuing supporting NASA and our country's goal to reestablish human presence on the moon" on its social media accounts following Isaacman's announcement of Artemis' program changes. Along with the task order, which is to be officially awarded later this year, NASA posted a justification to not compete the contract, citing the sped-up timelines needed for the program, which was facing delays of more than three years between missions. "Award to any source other than ULA would result in a substantial duplication of cost to the government that is not expected to be recovered through competition and would result in unacceptable schedule delays in fulfilling the agency's requirements," the justification reads. While Artemis II, which could fly as soon as April, is a lunar fly-by mission, NASA shifted plans to make Artemis III fly as soon as mid-2027 on a near-Earth mission to test out docking with lunar landers being created by SpaceX and Blue Origin. Aiming for as quick as 10-month turnaround between missions, Artemis IV would then come as soon as early 2028, looking to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. Artemis V could also fly as soon as late 2028. The task order seeks delivery of the Centaur V upper stages at least nine months before launch, meaning the first would need to be in hand a little more than a year from now and the second by around the end of 2027. The contract also calls from ULA to provide a third spare Centaur V. For ULA, the news is a bit of a boon for what has been a problematic year so far with its normal launch business. The company has managed just one launch this year, and the fourth ever of its Vulcan rocket, but suffered another burned-off piece of one of its boosters on launch. The good news is that the Vulcan was able to compensate for the booster and make it to space. And the Centaur V on the mission performed just as the three previous Vulcan launches, getting its payloads to the proper destination without any issue. The new task order's value was not published, but the company received $954.4 million for the hardware it provided for the first three missions, according to a 2022 audit from NASA's Office of the Inspector General. Boeing isn't out of the money with the new direction, though, as it still supplies the SLS core stage and will need to focus on getting those delivered in time as well. In addition, Boeing remains a 50% stakeholder with Lockheed Martin in ULA, which was created in 2006 out of those two companies' Atlas and Delta rocket programs. The big difference between the EUS and the Centaur V is the number of engines. EUS was to use four RL-10 engines, provided by L3Harris. The Centaur V has only two. The ICPS for Artemis I, II and III, use only one RL-10. L3Harris had already delivered the RL-10s for the EUS, but Kristin Houston, the company's president of its space propulsion & power systems program, said the change is welcome, and with an active RL-10 production line based in West Palm Beach, the company will have no problem meeting NASA's needs. "We are just really excited to see the new plan, the new Artemis overall architecture plan, especially the accelerated cadence," she said. "Getting launched at least once a year on a routine basis is going to help us get to the moon faster." (C) 2026 Orlando Sentinel. Visit at orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.