What You'll Do:- Lead the hardware engineering organization - opto-mechanical, structures, thermal, avionics - across approximately three to four teams of managers and ICs
- Own design margin discipline against design standards across thermal, structural, radiation, electrical, mass, and optical budgets, and make those margins routine rather than heroic
- Drive the AIT build flow from primary mirror unit fabrication through bus-to-payload integration through environmental test, eliminating the integration-stage discoveries that should have been caught analytically
- Set and defend make-vs-buy strategy: vertical integration where the physics is the moat, aggressive outsourcing of commodity, decisions documented and revisited
- Develop hardware engineering managers who can run their domains without requiring you in every technical decision
- Partner with the Director of Software, Systems Engineering, and program management to close the analytical loop between hardware design, flight telemetry, and the next build
- Engage directly in design reviews, anomaly investigations, and supplier technical assessments - operate in the system without becoming a bottleneck
Your Ideal Skills and Experience:- Twelve-plus years in precision spaceflight hardware, with at least four leading hardware engineering managers
- Hands-on depth in opto-mechanical engineering, structural dynamics, or precision pointing systems - you have personally owned a precision payload or precision pointing chain end-to-end
- Track record of design margin discipline against NASA, MIL, or equivalent standards, with examples where your margin calls held up under flight conditions
- Demonstrated cross-disciplinary system reasoning: you think in budgets across optics, structures, thermal, GNC, mass, and power, and you can trace budget violations to root cause
- Experience leading hardware through environmental test campaigns and on-orbit anomaly resolution
- Real make-vs-buy decisions you have owned and can defend with cost, schedule, and capability data
- Comfort holding a schedule against pressure when the analysis demands it, and yielding when the analysis says you can
Salary Range:- $213,036 - $243,416 per year
Compensation and Benefits for Full-Time Roles:- Employee friendly equity compensation
- 4% direct matching 401k
- Health Insurance: 100% employee coverage & 75% dependent coverage
- Parental leave and childcare coverage
- Flexible vacation and sick time from day one
- 12 company holidays
- $100 monthly wellness benefit
- Relocation package if not based in Denver
The final compensation package is subject to change if the candidate's experience and company need drive a different job level than originally slated for the position.
Albedo does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to Albedo employees. Albedo is not responsible for any fees or overhead related to unsolicited resumes.
Relocation: Relocation support for this position is available
Applicants must be a
U.S. Person as defined under 22 CFR 120.62
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Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented people tend to only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Albedo, we'd rather hear from you. We care more about how you think than which boxes you check. We value people who do the math, make their assumptions explicit, and ask the annoying questions: what breaks, what's the failure mode, what has to be true for this to work? If that sounds like you, apply, even if you don't meet every line.
