at Vast Space
Location
Long Beach, California, United States
Compensation
$189k–$268k USD
Type
full time
Posted
1 weeks ago
Market range · function + seniority
p25 · target · p75 · n=131
Posted $268k · above the band
Tailor your résumé to this role in 30 seconds.
Free account · ATS keyword check · per-job bullet rewrite by Claude.
At Vast, our mission is to contribute to a future where billions of people are living and thriving in space. Vast is developing next-generation space stations to ensure a continuous human presence in space for America and its allies, enabling advanced microgravity research and manufacturing, and unlocking a new space economy for government, corporate, and private customers. Using an incremental, hardware-rich and low-cost approach, Vast is rapidly developing its multi-module Haven Station. Haven Demo’s 2025 success made Vast the only operational commercial space station company to fly and operate its own spacecraft. Next, Haven-1 is expected to become the world’s first commercial space station when it launches, followed by additional Haven modules to enable permanent human presence by 2030. Our team is all-in, committed to executing our mission safely and on time. If you want to work with the most talented people on Earth furthering space exploration for humanity, come join us.
Vast is seeking an experienced Director, Satellite Engineering to lead development of a new constellation-ready 15kW spacecraft bus — a product line designed to scale to hundreds of spacecraft per year. Our first mission is a 10-satellite demo launch with customers spanning communications constellations, on-orbit compute, and scientific observation.
We're developing a new constellation-ready 15kW spacecraft bus — a product line designed to scale to hundreds of spacecraft per year. Our first mission is a 10-satellite demo launch in Q4 2027, with customers spanning communications constellations, on-orbit compute, and scientific observation. This is the engineering leadership role for that product line. You'll own the technical execution of the spacecraft bus — managing discipline leads across electronics, thermal, GNC, power, structures, and flight software, and delivering flight hardware on schedule.
This role carries Chief Engineer responsibility: you are the final technical authority on the satellite bus design. You'll make architecture decisions, run design reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, MRR), and own the engineering schedule. You'll manage a growing team of subsystem leads and coordinate with existing teams in solar arrays, electric propulsion, and avionics/software.
A core part of our strategy is building a mission factory — software infrastructure that dramatically reduces the time from customer contract to payload on orbit. We do this by empowering subject matter experts with AI code generation tools to build their own engineering software: custom simulation, analysis, test automation, and integration workflows, all backed by rigorous hand-calculation validation suites. This toolchain is already our primary engineering record and the foundation of how we scale. You'll champion this approach across the engineering organization.
This will be a full-time, exempt position located in our Long Beach location.
Responsibilities:
Within your first 6 weeks:
Minimum Qualifications:
Preferred Skills & Experience:
U.S. EXPORT CONTROL COMPLIANCE STATUS
The person hired will have access to information and items subject to U.S. export controls, and therefore, must either be a “U.S. person” as defined by 22 C.F.R. § 120.62 or otherwise eligible for deemed export licensing. This status includes U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents (green card holders), and asylees and refugees with such status granted, not pending.EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
More open roles at Vast Space
Hiring velocity, headcount trend, and every open posting on one page.
Open postings ranked by description similarity — useful if this role isn't quite right.