Principal Systems Engineer - Infrared Sensor Payloads

Sierra Space Careers:

At Sierra Space, we build the missions and systems that keep our world secure in the domain above Earth.  

Sierra Space team members share a spirit of innovation and collaboration and a belief that we can deliver on the boldest missions in space today. Together with our customers, we aim to safeguard our nation, sustain human presence in space, and secure the freedom of operations in low Earth orbit and beyond.  

Our success is measured by the trust of those who rely on what we build and deliver, and our technologies keep the United States and its allies mission-ready throughout space.

We are mission-driven, and together, we are an extraordinary team.

About the Role

Sierra Space is seeking a Principal Systems Engineer –Infrared Sensor Payloads to provide technical leadership and systems engineering oversight for advanced space-based infrared sensing capabilities supporting missile warning and missile tracking missions.
In this role, you will serve as a senior technical authority for the infrared mission payload and associated missile detection, tracking, and mission-processing algorithms. You will work across payload suppliers, mission software and algorithms, spacecraft systems engineering, guidance/navigation/control, avionics, mission operations, and customer organizations to ensure delivery of an integrated sensing capability that meets demanding mission performance requirements.
The position will support proliferated low-Earth-orbit missile warning and tracking architectures similar to the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Tracking Layer. These missions combine space-based infrared sensing, onboard processing, advanced tracking algorithms, multi-sensor data fusion, and low-latency dissemination to provide persistent detection and tracking of conventional and advanced missile threats.
This is a highly interdisciplinary position requiring the ability to understand the complete sensing chain — from photons entering the payload through production of actionable missile track data — and to drive technical decisions across organizational and supplier boundaries.

About You

Our mission is driven by an unyielding commitment to advancing space-based technology in service of our customers and safeguarding national security. We seek individuals who are passionate about innovating beyond boundaries and relentlessly pursuing solutions that protect, preserve and empower – to join us in this critical mission.  

We’re looking for team members who align with our values, mission and goals – while also meeting the minimum qualifications below. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the lead systems engineering interface and technical authority for the program’s infrared sensor payload, including requirements, architecture, interfaces, performance, development, integration, verification, and on-orbit performance.
• Provide technical oversight of payload supplier activities throughout the development lifecycle, including design reviews, technical interchange meetings, risk reviews, qualification, acceptance testing, and delivery.
• Lead definition, decomposition, allocation, and verification of mission-level and payload-level requirements for missile warning and missile tracking performance.
• Maintain an end-to-end understanding of the sensor-to-track performance chain, including target phenomenology, backgrounds, optics, focal plane performance, detection processing, discrimination, tracking, estimation, data fusion, and mission data products.
• Provide technical leadership for development, review and verification of missile detection and tracking algorithms, including detection, association, track initiation, state estimation, track maintenance, discrimination, and multi-sensor or multi-spacecraft track fusion.
• Work closely with algorithm and software teams to translate mission performance requirements into algorithm requirements, interfaces, test objectives, and verification criteria.
• Lead and review modeling, simulation, and analysis used to predict end-to-end mission performance across representative threat trajectories, viewing geometries, backgrounds, and operational scenarios.
• Evaluate infrared sensor performance including sensitivity, noise, dynamic range, spatial and temporal resolution, radiometric performance, calibration, line-of-sight knowledge, and other characteristics affecting missile detection and track quality.
• Support development and validation of performance budgets and technical margins spanning the payload, spacecraft, mission processing, and tracking algorithms.
• Ensure appropriate allocation and management of spacecraft-to-payload interfaces, including electrical, mechanical, thermal, data, timing, pointing, jitter, line-of-sight knowledge, and onboard processing interfaces.
• Work closely with spacecraft GNC and systems engineering teams to ensure pointing knowledge, pointing control, stability, timing, and navigation performance support payload and mission-level track accuracy requirements.
• Lead technical assessment and resolution of payload and algorithm anomalies, non-conformances, performance shortfalls, and emerging technical risks.
• Develop and maintain technical risk and opportunity assessments for the payload and missile tracking capability and drive mitigation activities to closure.
• Support payload integration and test, spacecraft-level testing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, mission simulations, calibration activities, and end-to-end mission verification.
• Define and evaluate test scenarios and mission performance metrics used to demonstrate missile detection, tracking, and track-quality performance.
• Support launch, early orbit operations, payload checkout, calibration, and on-orbit mission performance characterization.
• Evaluate on-orbit data and recommend changes to calibration, processing parameters, algorithms, or operational concepts to improve mission performance.
• Serve as a primary technical interface with customers, payload suppliers, algorithm developers, and other mission partners for infrared sensing and missile tracking performance.
• Present complex technical information, analyses, risks, and recommendations to program leadership, customers, suppliers, and senior technical review boards.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across multidisciplinary teams without requiring direct organizational authority.

About You

Our mission requires engineers who can move comfortably between detailed technical analysis and system-level decision making. The successful candidate will be able to understand both the physics of infrared sensing and the systems engineering required to turn sensor measurements into operationally useful missile tracks.

We’re looking for team members who align with our values, mission, and goals while also meeting the minimum qualifications below. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline and typically 14 or more years of relevant experience.
• Higher-level degree may substitute for relevant experience; relevant technical experience may be considered in lieu of required education where appropriate.
• Significant experience developing, integrating, or evaluating space-based electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor systems or comparable advanced remote-sensing systems.
• Strong systems engineering background including requirements development and decomposition, architecture development, interface definition, technical performance management, verification and validation, and risk management.
• Experience with infrared sensor or payload performance analysis, including the ability to understand the relationship between sensor characteristics and end-to-end mission performance.
• Experience with target detection, tracking, estimation, sensor fusion, or related mission-processing algorithms.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical activities involving multiple engineering disciplines and external suppliers.
• Experience with modeling and simulation used to assess sensor, algorithm, or mission-level performance.
• Experience developing and presenting technical assessments and recommendations to engineering leadership, program management, customers, and technical review boards.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced development environment with aggressive program schedules and significant technical complexity.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret U.S. Government security clearance with SCI eligibility.

Preferred Requirements

• Active Top Secret U.S. Government security clearance with SCI eligibility.
• Experience with space-based missile warning, missile tracking, missile defense, or overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) missions.
• Experience with the Space Development Agency Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), particularly the Tracking Layer.
• Understanding of missile and hypersonic threat phenomenology, infrared signatures, Earth and atmospheric backgrounds, and viewing geometry.
• Experience with wide-field-of-view infrared payloads used for persistent missile warning and tracking.
• Knowledge of infrared focal plane arrays, optical systems, radiometry, detector performance, calibration, image processing, and sensor characterization.
• Experience with missile tracking algorithms including detection, clustering, association, filtering, state estimation, track initiation/termination, discrimination, and multi-object tracking.
• Experience with estimation techniques such as Kalman filtering, extended/unscented Kalman filtering, multiple-model estimation, or related tracking methods.
• Experience with multi-sensor and multi-spacecraft track fusion, including generation of 3D track solutions from distributed sensing architectures.
• Understanding of track-quality metrics and their relationship to downstream warning, cueing, targeting, or fire-control applications.
• Experience developing or evaluating onboard mission processing architectures for latency-sensitive space missions.
• Experience with MATLAB, Python, C++, or comparable tools used for sensor and algorithm modeling, simulation, and data analysis.
• Experience with Monte Carlo mission performance analysis and statistically based verification approaches.
• Experience developing and executing hardware-in-the-loop or processor-in-the-loop mission simulations.
• Knowledge of spacecraft pointing, jitter, alignment, timing, navigation, and line-of-sight error sources and their effects on geolocation and missile track accuracy.
• Experience with payload-to-spacecraft integration and environmental qualification of spaceflight hardware.
• Experience supporting payload calibration, launch and early orbit operations, on-orbit checkout, or mission data analysis.
• Experience working with U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Space Force, Space Development Agency, Missile Defense Agency, or Intelligence Community space programs.
• Experience working within rapid acquisition or proliferated spacecraft programs where cost, schedule, production scalability, and technical performance must be balanced.

Technical Leadership Focus

The Principal Systems Engineer will be expected to maintain technical insight across three tightly coupled areas:

Infrared Payload Performance
Understand and drive the performance of the sensor itself, including optics, focal plane, electronics, calibration, radiometric performance, spatial/temporal performance, and payload interfaces.

Detection & Tracking Algorithms
Provide technical oversight of the processing chain that converts infrared observations into detections and persistent tracks, including algorithm performance, robustness, verification, and implementation constraints.

End-to-End Mission Performance
Ensure that the combined payload, spacecraft, algorithms, and mission architecture produce the required operational capability. This includes understanding how sensor performance, pointing and navigation knowledge, geometry, processing latency, track fusion, and communications collectively affect missile warning and tracking performance.

Success in this role is measured not simply by successful delivery of an infrared payload, but by demonstrating that the integrated system produces accurate, timely, and reliable mission data for the warfighter.

Compensation:

Pay Range:

$164,164.00 - $225,725.50

Your actual base compensation will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on job-related knowledge and skills, education, experience, internal equity and market competitiveness.

Additional Information

This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret U.S. Security Clearance. U.S. Citizenship status is required as this position needs an active U.S. Security Clearance for employment. Non-U.S. Citizens may not be eligible to obtain a security clearance.  The Department of Defense Consolidated Adjudications Facility (DoD CAF), a federal government agency, handles the adjudicative aspects of the security clearance eligibility process for industry applicants. Adjudicative factors which affect the outcome of the eligibility determination include, but are not limited to, allegiance to the U.S., foreign influence, foreign preference, criminal conduct, security violations and illegal drug use. 

Elevate Your Career

At Sierra Space, we are committed to your personal and professional development. We empower you to make profound and meaningful contributions and foster a vibrant culture of collaboration, where teamwork ignites breakthrough innovations. 

 
We also offer a generous benefit package, including medical, dental, and vision plans, 401(k) with 150% match up to 6%, life insurance, 3 weeks paid time off, and more.

Sierra Space is an industry-leading space and defense technology company providing satellites, spacecraft, and enabling mission systems and components. We deliver mission-proven technologies to our customers that safeguard our nation, protect space-based assets and enable space exploration.

Application Deadline: This role will remain posted until a qualified pool of candidates is identified.

Please note: Sierra Space does not accept unsolicited resumes from contract agencies or search firms. Any unsolicited resumes submitted to our website or to Sierra Space team members not through our approved vendor list or Talent Acquisition will be considered property of Sierra Space, and we will not be obligated to pay any referral fees.

Sierra Space Corporation is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. If you need special assistance or a reasonable accommodation related to applying for employment with Sierra Space or at any stage of the recruitment process, please contact us.