Director, Platforms & Mission Engineering

Be more than just an employee number! Join Terran Orbital, a leader in innovation, manufacturing, and operations in the satellite industry. We are a pioneer in the miniaturization of space technologies and the delivery of responsive space solutions. We are a unique, fast-growing, and trusted team focused on quickly and economically designing, building, launching, and operating state-of-the-art satellites for advanced mission constellations.

Terran Orbital is seeking an experienced Director, Platforms & Mission Engineering (PME) to join our growing team. Reporting to the VP, Space & Mission Systems, the Director, Platforms and Mission Engineering will provide organizational vision and management of engineering and supporting personnel for Space Platform & Mission Engineering. The Director, Platforms & Mission Engineering leads the organization responsible for Space Platform Products and Mission Engineering across the portfolio. The role will provide guidance and management of strong systems thinking, product definition, productization, and ensure the necessary and pertinent processes are performed throughout business acquisition and product development phases. This includes mission engineering, system architecture & analysis, product baselines, requirements management, system performance modeling and analysis, systems design integration & test, system verification and validation, specialty, systems safety, and system sustainment.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

• Liaison with Program Management, Components and Modules Group (CMG), Assembly, Integration & Test (AIT), DFX.
• Support engineering department operations.
• Collaboration with Business Development, identify IRAD needs and priorities.
• Product Baseline architecture, design integration, and systems engineering definitions.
• Provide ownership for the people, processes, and tools that support business captures, support product definition engineering activities, including managing, and integrating personnel recruiting, employee development, employee engagement, skills development, staffing, process, and support product development.
• Provide support for new business development, implementation of systems engineering process, technical risk & opportunity management, and lessons learned from ground operations, test, and on-orbit evaluation.
• Orchestrate systems engineering on new business activities, establishing product organizational structures, building high performance teams, managing system development, owning and developing technical product baselines, managing product baseline change, owning and executing technical product reviews, and measuring execution through system delivery, system operations, and system retirement.
• Oversee technical aspect of reviews, responsible for productization, process improvement plans, proposal review, and commitment authority for scope of work.
• Ensure application of sound Engineering processes with tailoring as defined by Mission Class, Mission Area, Business direction, and customer contractual direction.
• Responsible for participation in internal and external audits, as well as Engineering corrective action or Review boards.
• Responsible for advising on strategic roadmaps for existing and proposed product lines with guidance on their applicability, capabilities, and risk posture.
• Capable of personally contributing on a technical level to ensure quality, efficient, and thorough engineering throughout the product lifecycle.
• Participate, lead, and create a culture that supports technical discussions with internal stakeholders, customers, and suppliers to ensure product and mission success.
• Manage mission, system, and product level trade studies to balance risk, cost, and performance with respect to market demands.
• Ensure engineering artifacts that support requirements and architecture development; modeling and simulation; cybersecurity; network operations; interoperability; verification and validation testing; and enterprise deployment and capability monitoring.
• Establish standard operating procedures that support mission assurance, risk mitigation, and contingency plans to assure required mission "up time" for all ground activities.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to define interfaces; integrate mission applications and data storage; and verify Terran Orbital enterprise capabilities.
• Implement life cycle engineering best practices.