Senior Mission Systems Engineer Lead - Environmental Monitoring / Space-Based Sensing

Stellar Solutions, a nationally recognized “Great Place To Work,” delivers engineering solutions across commercial space and national security missions—from innovative new entrants to established space systems organizations.

We bring talented, energetic, and immediately productive professionals to meet critical customer needs in systems engineering and integration, mission operations, program management, and strategic planning, helping teams deliver resilient capability to the mission with speed, quality, and focus.

Stellar Solutions is seeking a Senior Mission Systems Engineer Lead to support a proposed Environmental Monitoring mission area within a broader Space-Based Sensing and Tracking enterprise.

This role provides senior systems engineering, mission engineering, requirements, technical governance, and acquisition-support expertise for government customers standing up, inheriting, assessing, and scaling space-based sensing programs at varying stages of maturity. The role helps government customers establish technical baselines, assess inherited program maturity, develop requirements, impose consistent engineering governance, and guide mission-area execution from early definition through IOC and FOC.

This is a senior technical leadership role for a systems engineer who can operate across mission, acquisition, engineering, contractor, and operational-user communities. The role supports Environmental Monitoring capabilities within a broader space-based sensing enterprise and helps align technical baselines, requirements, interfaces, and mission outcomes across programs at different lifecycle stages.

Key responsibilities include:

• Serve as the lead mission systems engineer supporting the Environmental Monitoring mission area.
• Provide systems engineering and mission engineering support across the full lifecycle, including concept definition, requirements development, architecture assessment, integration planning, verification, transition, and sustainment.
• Support technical baseline assessments for inherited or existing programs, including review of requirements, architecture products, interface documentation, test artifacts, risk posture, and maturity against mission objectives.
• Establish consistent technical governance across programs that may be at different lifecycle stages.
• Support Define-Assess-Forecast-Build activities by identifying technical competencies, expertise gaps, program maturity, workforce needs, and scaling priorities.
• Develop, refine, and manage mission-level requirements, system requirements, technical baselines, interface needs, and performance measures.
• Coordinate across government program leadership, PD/PO teams, acquisition stakeholders, technical SMEs, contractors, ground systems teams, mission users, and enterprise-level engineering leadership.
• Support mission thread development, requirements traceability, operational use-case definition, and transition from mission need to executable engineering and acquisition plans.
• Advise customer leadership on technical risk, requirements quality, architecture maturity, program readiness, integration gaps, and mission-area governance.
• Support acquisition engineering activities, including technical input to acquisition strategies, RFPs, SOWs/PWSs, evaluation criteria, technical reviews, CDRLs, and contractor oversight.
• Ensure Environmental Monitoring capabilities align with SBST lines of effort, enterprise standards, digital-engineering objectives, and progression toward IOC and FOC.
• Translate complex technical and mission needs into clear decision materials, executive briefings, engineering recommendations, and customer-facing guidance.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of systems engineering, mission engineering, acquisition support, SETA, government advisory, space systems, ISR, GEOINT, remote sensing, environmental monitoring, or national security space experience.
• Experience supporting government space, satellite, remote sensing, radar/RF, SAR, GEOINT, ISR, environmental monitoring, Earth observation, ground systems, or mission-data programs.
• Strong understanding of the systems engineering lifecycle, including requirements development, architecture assessment, interface management, technical baseline development, risk management, verification, validation, and transition to operations.
• Experience supporting technical governance, engineering reviews, program readiness assessments, or cross-contractor integration.
• Prior support to agencies or mission environments such as SDA, SSC, NRO, NGA, AFRL, USSF, MDA, NOAA, NASA, USGS, DoD, IC, or related federal customers.
• Ability to work across technical, acquisition, contractor, and operational-user communities.
• Strong communication skills, including experience preparing executive-level briefings, technical assessments, engineering recommendations, and decision materials.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with Environmental Monitoring, space-based sensing, radar/RF sensing, SAR, GEOINT, ISR, remote sensing, commercial satellite data, or mission-data dissemination.
• Experience supporting SETA, FFRDC, government advisory, acquisition-support, or technical program-management contracts.
• Familiarity with digital engineering, MBSE, architecture frameworks, mission threads, CONOPS, ICDs, V&V, risk registers, CDRLs, technical baselines, or requirements traceability.
• Experience assessing programs at varying levels of maturity and helping customers impose consistent engineering discipline across non-uniform program portfolios.

Clearance & Additional Requirements

• Active security clearance 

Location

This position is located in Chantilly, VA

Deliverables will be in the format of reports, briefings, spreadsheets, or other documents as directed by the Government, using Government-approved and/or mandated systems/software and processes governed by guidance/instructions/policy or direction. The nature of this work will, at times, require quick responses to stringent deadlines and always in a high-quality, professional manner.