Star Catcher Industries, Inc., located in
Jacksonville, Florida, has an opportunity for a
Senior Electrical Engineer - Controls (Pointing, Acquisition & Tracking) to support the development of space-to-space power beaming spacecraft and the Star Catcher Network, its orbital power grid.
Key Responsibilities- Lead pointing, acquisition, and tracking (PAT) controls for spacecraft optical power delivery, from requirements and design through real-time implementation, verification, and on-orbit performance assessment.
- Own PAT control and estimation architecture, including coarse/fine pointing coordination, acquisition, handoff, tracking, loss-of-lock detection, and reacquisition. Co-own system interfaces with electrical, FPGA, flight software, optical, mechanical, and spacecraft attitude-control leads.
- Develop detection, centroiding, estimation, and sensor-fusion algorithms robust to low signal-to-noise ratio, background variation, platform motion, and intermittent measurements. Define measurement-validity and tracking-confidence criteria.
- Define sensor, actuator, and processing requirements for field of view, dynamic range, noise, bandwidth, update rates, timestamp accuracy, latency, jitter, travel limits, and saturation behavior.
- Own pointing and tracking error budgets, including bias, alignment, thermal drift, measurement noise, platform jitter, and timing error. Define coordinate frames and boresight calibration with optics and systems teams; allocate requirements and verification evidence across subsystems.
- Deliver reference models and implementation requirements to FPGA and embedded software teams. Define numeric precision, timing, interfaces, telemetry, and fault behavior, and verify implemented algorithms against the reference models.
- Build and correlate plant and end-to-end PAT models using measured actuator, sensor, and structural behavior. Evaluate stability, disturbance rejection, cross-axis coupling, saturation, and uncertainty across operating conditions.
- Lead requirements-based verification using simulation, recorded-data replay, hardware-in-the-loop, and integrated testing. Cover acquisition, calibration, handoff, tracking, loss of lock, and recovery with repeatable acceptance criteria and configuration-controlled results.
- Lead PAT architecture trade studies and support new program pursuits. Define tracking-validity and recovery interfaces with flight software and safety owners, including operating permissions and constraints.
- Mentor engineers and lead technical design reviews as the PAT team grows.
Basic Qualifications- Education: Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Controls, Applied Physics, or a related technical discipline.
- Experience: 5+ years of experience developing pointing, tracking, or guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems (e.g., optical tracking systems, line-of-sight stabilization, spacecraft attitude control, or gimbaled sensor systems). Senior-level selection is based on demonstrated PAT architecture ownership, integrated hardware verification, cross-disciplinary decisions, and technical leadership; five years is a minimum experience threshold, not a substitute for this evidence.
- Strong foundation in control theory, estimation, and signal processing, with demonstrated design and hardware validation of precision feedback loops, including sampled-data effects, stability margins, disturbance rejection, and actuator limits.
- Demonstrated experience developing target detection, centroiding, and tracking algorithms using imaging or position-sensing detectors.
- Experience applying state estimation and sensor fusion, including measurement validity, covariance interpretation, coordinate transformations, and time alignment.
- Experience translating algorithms into real-time embedded implementations with FPGA, DSP, or processor teams, including latency and numerical-precision tradeoffs and model-to-implementation verification.
- Hands-on experience with system identification, control-loop tuning, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and troubleshooting integrated hardware/software systems; proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink, Python, or equivalent modeling and analysis tools.
Desired Skills- Heritage developing PAT, optical tracking, or line-of-sight stabilization systems that have flown on spacecraft or aircraft.
- Experience using orbital ephemerides, relative-motion geometry, and uncertainty estimates for acquisition planning, including assessing data age and quality and handling cases where covariance is unavailable.
- Experience with active illumination or lidar-based tracking and ranging systems.
- Experience with fast steering mirrors, gimbals, or coarse pointing assemblies, including coarse/fine loop interaction, actuator saturation, and anti-windup.
- Familiarity with EO/IR sensor characteristics (noise sources, integration time, stray light, background rejection) and their effect on tracking performance.
- Experience with fixed-point algorithm design and verification, model-based design, or code-generation workflows for FPGA or embedded processors.
- C/C++ experience for embedded implementation and Python or MATLAB experience for automated analysis, data replay, and test.
- Familiarity with spacecraft attitude determination and control, payload-to-bus pointing interfaces, boresight calibration, and thermomechanical alignment effects.
- Experience with NASA/DoD life cycle and technical reviews (e.g., SRR, PDR, CDR).
- Experience mentoring engineers or leading technical design reviews.
Help us deploy and scale space infrastructure that will drive our utilization of space forward! We offer a highly competitive benefits package including access to comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement plan, life insurance, and paid parental leave, in addition to other benefits. 
