Flight Dynamics Operations Lead

Location: Central Boulder, CO | Workplace: 100% Onsite

Salary: $135,000 – $160,000

Step into your first true leadership assignment and own the operational readiness of a live satellite operations environment—serving as the technical lead, primary client interface, and operational anchor for a highly profitable, self-funded 40-person aerospace engineering and software firm.

Our client is a highly agile aerospace technology company that designs the mission-critical astrodynamics and Space Domain Awareness (SDA) applications used to protect global satellite constellations. Historically, their real-time operations have been successfully run "by committee" across the engineering department—but as their customer base and live mission footprints scale, they need a dedicated leader to own the tip of the spear.

They are looking for a hands-on Flight Dynamics Operations Lead who brings deep technical credibility, a systems engineering mindset, and strong organizational chops. You will sit console alongside an elite team, setting the standard for precision, driving automated workflows, and ensuring flawless execution under nominal and non-nominal flight conditions.

The Opportunity

This is a highly visible leadership role where you will run day-to-day operations and interface directly with major civil, commercial, and government space customers. You will define the concepts of operations (ConOps) for incoming missions, manage the team's shift and standby schedules, and spearhead continuous training and simulation testing.

Because our client builds the applications they deploy, you will also bridge the gap between operations and software development—writing automation scripts in MATLAB/Python, diving into cloud middleware (AWS), and aggressively running post-incident "lessons learned" to ensure the platform constantly evolves.

What You’ll Do

• Own the daily flight dynamics delivery pipeline, performing accurate orbit determination and generating critical mission products across multiple orbital regimes.
• Create, validate, and execute precise satellite maneuver plans, including station-keeping and active orbit adjustments.
• Manage real-time collision risk assessment workflows and execute tactical collision avoidance strategies.
• Develop and optimize robust automation scripts in Python or MATLAB to eliminate human friction and produce error-free operational telemetry products.
• Own the end-to-end training and certification process for the flight dynamics engineering team, designing simulation scenarios to keep operators qualified and sharp.
• Serve as the primary, high-credibility technical interface to internal software teams and external customer flight directors.
• Build and maintain a balanced operational standby and coverage schedule, ensuring SLA commitments are flawlessly met without burning out the team.
• Champion a culture of operational discipline—leading post-event reviews, documenting runbooks, and updating console procedures as missions evolve.

What You Bring

• Academic Background: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a highly related technical discipline.
• Core Technical Depth: 4+ years of hands-on experience in flight dynamics, satellite constellation operations, or high-stakes space situational awareness.
• Military / Operational Equivalence: We highly value operations personnel coming from specialized military space operations cadres, provided you possess the necessary code literacy and physics background.
• Software & Infrastructure Skills: Proven experience developing, testing, and debugging complex MATLAB or Python scripts, alongside an eagerness to master event-driven automation within an AWS cloud environment.
• Niche Astrodynamics Baseline: Concrete familiarity with state estimation, probability and statistics, conjunction assessment, and orbit adjustment profiles.
• Leadership & Communication: Natural capability to mentor peers, organize chaotic operational schedules, and brief complex, real-time data trends to non-specialist or executive audiences.
• Clearance Pathway: Must be a U.S. person, eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.

What Is Offered

• Competitive base salary of $135,000 – $160,000 based on experience.
• A flat, open-door engineering culture where your operational insights directly dictate how the core software platform is architected.
• A structured operational standby framework where active off-hours or weekend troubleshooting hours count directly back into your normal 40-hour work week.
• Generous paid leave structure: 3 weeks of standard open PTO + 10 government-aligned holidays (5 weeks total paid leave).
• 401(k) retirement plan with a 3% company match.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Full relocation assistance with reasonable caps for out-of-state transitions.