Senior Systems Engineer, Mission Success & Performance

About the Role

Muon seeks a strategic architect of mission success to join our Mission Engineering team. As we scale the Muon Mission Foundry, you will champion predictable mission outcomes across the entire Mission Execution process, ensuring operational and business objectives are achieved consistently and reliably. The ideal candidate has deployed revenue-generating systems in the field, understanding the nuances of transitioning from technology demonstrations to scalable operational capacity.

This cross-functional role spans the full lifecycle of mission design and execution, guaranteeing technical integrity as we “build the machine that builds the machines.” Pre-launch, you will act as the vanguard for mission readiness, driving right-sized Verification & Validation (V&V) campaigns that balance rigor and risk-tolerance with speed of Assembly, Integration, and Test (AI&T). Post-launch, you will work with operators to maximize the operational reality and business value of assets, analyzing performance to close the loop between space and future platform designs. A key focus is autonomy and resilience, shaping fault management to reduce operator toil. You will also act as a technical stakeholder for internal tooling roadmaps that enable scaling.

At Muon, "right-sizing" means balancing technical risk with business outcomes, prioritizing efforts that improve gross margins and revenue over policing internal processes.

Responsibilities

• Enable the Muon Mission Foundry by driving processes and architectural decisions that allow scalable spacecraft production and mission operations, moving beyond legacy quality assurance paradigms.
• Partner with Mission Systems Engineers to own and track V&V compliance, verification progress, and test coverage campaigns.
• Streamline AI&T workflows by identifying V&V bottlenecks and championing pragmatic Test Like You Fly (TLYF) standards.
• Analyze on-orbit telemetry and platform operations to maximize utility and capacity of deployed assets.
• Drive predictable outcomes by ensuring on-orbit performance matches pre-flight models, monitoring trends and impacts to mission SLAs, and validating customer-facing specifications.
• Own the fleet-learning loop for cross-cutting technical issues, deciding what warrants engineering focus, chartering multidisciplinary teams for root cause and prevention, and closing the loop into design.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to align requirements, resolve interface ambiguities, and synchronize delivery on autonomy and resilience efforts.
• Act as a key technical stakeholder for internal tooling roadmaps (e.g., MuSim, power analysis, data throughput), extending baseline code to enable Foundry scaling.
• Make pragmatic decisions balancing engineering pain points against business outcomes, prioritizing work that drives revenue.

Qualifications

• M.S. or higher degree in an engineering field plus 8+ years of experience in a multi-disciplinary environment, ideally with exposure to mission design, spacecraft operations, and systems architecture.
• Experience with deployed systems in high-reliability, performance-critical environments.
• Proven business acumen within engineering, understanding how asset capacity, uptime, and resilience impact gross margins and revenue.
• Extensive experience in AI&T workflows and V&V strategies, including tracking defect escape rates and test coverage.
• Strong software skills (e.g., Python, Julia) with the ability to build upon existing codebases and support internal tooling roadmaps.
• Demonstrated ability to model system performance (power, thermal, data throughput) and validate models against real-world, on-orbit data.
• Excellent communication and prioritization skills, balancing technical risk with agile business constraints.
• Ability to adapt rapidly in a high-paced, rewarding work environment.

Nice-to-have Skills

• Deep understanding of spacecraft autonomy and fault management architectures, including FMECA, tiered response design, and integration of FSW/GSW.
• Ability to write implementable requirements and review FSW designs/code for autonomy behavior.
• Experience as a lead systems engineer or technical stakeholder in an agile environment.
• Remote sensing instrument experience across modalities (e.g., optical, multispectral, RF) and associated data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience developing, extending, or utilizing complex simulation environments.
• Familiarity with software engineering tools and processes (version control, code review).

Pay

The salary range for this role is $142,000 - $208,000, plus a competitive equity grant. Final compensation will be determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401k retirement plan.
• Short & long-term disability and life insurance.
• Three weeks paid vacation for new employees, 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time, and paid parental leave.

Note: This position requires access to export-controlled information. Applicants must be U.S. persons or eligible under U.S. export regulations.