Junior Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer

In this position you will work with our team of engineers and our NASA customers to support human spaceflight programs at NASAs Johnson Space Center such as Gateway the Orion crew vehicle and the International Space Station. You will assist in the development of Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) subsystem Flight Software (FSW) and integrated Flight Hardware (FHW). This may also include integration with human-computer interfaces flight computer data interfaces custom development and integration tools and spacecraft and space mission environment simulations. Candidates must have solid software development integration and testing skills; strong communication abilities initiative and an aptitude for hands-on problem solving and troubleshooting.

A Junior Spacecraft Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) Engineer typically focuses onsupporting the design analysis and simulation of systems that manage a spacecrafts trajectory and attitude. At this level you will work under the mentorship of senior engineers to develop algorithms and validate system performance through rigorous testing.


Key Responsibilities:

• Algorithm Development:Assist in designing and implementing control loops for attitude determination and position control.
• Modeling & Simulation:Develop and maintain high-fidelity 6-DOF (degree-of-freedom) simulation models for vehicle dynamics sensors (e.g. star trackers GPS) and actuators (e.g. reaction wheels thrusters).
• Performance Analysis:Conduct Monte Carlo simulations and frequency-domain stability analyses to ensure compliance with mission requirements.
• Testing & Verification:Support hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) and software-in-the-loop (SIL) testing to validate GNC flight software.
• Mission Operations Support:Analyze flight telemetry data to troubleshoot anomalies and assess on-orbit performance.
• Documentation:Create technical reports design review presentations and interface control documents (ICDs).

• Education:Bachelors degree in Aerospace Software Mechanical or Electrical Engineering Computer Science or a related field (e.g. PhysicsMath).
• Technical Knowledge:Strong foundation in orbital mechanics classical and modern control theory and state estimation (e.g. Kalman filtering).
• Software Skills:Proficiency inMATLAB/Simulinkis standard; experience with C/C and/orPythonfor algorithm implementation is highly valued.
• Communication:Ability to collaborate effectively in multidisciplinary teams and present findings to stakeholders.

• Experience with Government Off-The-Shelf (GOTS) and/or Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) mission simulation and analysis software tools such as NASAs TRICK NASAs GMAT NASAs Copernicus AGIs STK and/or ai Solutions FreeFlyer.
• Knowledge of GNC HW components such as GPS Receivers Star Trackers Inertial Measurement Units Gyroscopes Magnetorquers Control Moment Gyros Reaction Wheels and/or cold gas jet thrusters.
• Familiarity with software configuration management systems such asGit Bitbucket Subversion (SVN) etc.
• Experience with software issue tracking and delegation tools such as Jira GitLab GitHub Trello etc.

Citizenship or lawful permanent resident required due to federal position.

About METECS:

We are a high-performance team providing advanced engineering software and analysis solutions for human space flight and terrestrial applications. We develop and integrate custom software for NASA and other government and commercial customers utilizing a wide variety of in-house commercial and open-source technologies. Our specialties include robotics automation embedded systems hardware/software integration multibody dynamics simulations immersive computer graphics XR systems and advanced web-based tools.

METECS is an Equal Opportunity Employer including veterans and individuals with disabilities.