Spacecraft Engineer

About us

At Viasat, the work you do helps people stay connected in ways that matter, from everyday moments to critical missions across air, land, sea, and space.

We’re a place for people who are curious, bold, and motivated by meaningful work. Here, you'll have the opportunity to make an impact, explore new possibilities, and grow your career in ways that align with your interests and goals. When you're ready to take on something new, you'll find leaders who support your development and help you turn your ambition into action.

What you'll do

Viasat operates 20 geosynchronous satellites from its US and UK based Satellite Control Centres. An in-orbit spacecraft engineer is required to take a responsible position as part of the Spacecraft Engineering team who perform the on-station spacecraft operations, looking after the health and performance of the satellites for Viasat current and future satellite fleets operated from the US or London.

The day-to-day

Key Responsibilities

• To define, plan and execute operations to manage the satellite configurations to maintain their health, safety and function and could include coordinating activities among several engineering groups both within and external to the department.
• To assess and report on satellite health and performance by daily monitoring of their status and monitoring of long-term trends in behaviour of on-board units.
• To respond under pressure to satellite contingency situations by assessing satellite status, performing the correct triage, identifying the remedial response and directing recovery operations according to a well-defined incident management process.
• To diagnose problems as quickly as possible, determine the underlying root cause of incidents and identify workarounds or permanent solutions to prevent reoccurrence with the spacecraft manufacturer using techniques such as 8D, 5 whys, fault tree/fishbone analysis to get to the root cause of a problem and then to be able to identify corrective and preventive measures.
• To maintain satellite operational products such as satellite telemetry and telecommand databases, including alarm limits, to support safe and efficient operations and to maintain the routine and contingency satellite control procedures and validate updates against the satellite simulator and maintain the satellite simulators to have a fully representative test bed.
• To develop and maintain the reference data sets and software applications including AI and analytics applications required by the Spacecraft Engineering Department to perform the satellite health and performance monitoring, operations planning, checking and reporting to ensure early detection of problems and anomaly characterization.
• To ensure any training plan and accreditation are up to date and when required, the provision of any training, definition of courseware and assessments are conducted accurately, effectively and efficiently.
• To work with other departments of Viasat Engineering and Viasat Global Services and spacecraft manufacturer engineering support teams to investigate anomalies and develop relevant operational solutions.
• To develop and distribute reports including reporting of technical analysis findings and recommendations, anomaly resolution and problem root cause analyses, periodic satellite health and performance reports, insurance reports and any other reports required for regulatory reasons.
• To work on new satellite programs on systems engineering, operations development, integration and validation activities and to support the Viasat Engineering Space Infrastructure procurement team with program reviews and support any launch and in-orbit tests of new satellites where required.
• Provide support in defining and developing satellite system and subsystem requirements for ground control system and networks for new satellite programs. This includes the development of test plans, conducting acceptance tests, planning and conducting ground to satellite compatibility tests (COMPAT/SVT) with the spacecraft manufacturer, and resolving issues.
• Provide any support required to Viasat Engineering Space Infrastructure procurement in evaluating spacecraft procurement proposals.
• To respond positively to any other requests that help achieve Viasat’s goals.

Specific Conditions of the Role

• The Spacecraft Engineer will be required to be part of an on-call roster and therefore should be available to provide on-call support during evenings and weekends. This may require the individual to travel to the Satellite Control Centre outside of office hours within a reasonable timeframe (within 90 mins commute). Working outside of office hours may also be required occasionally to support certain planned operations.
• Given the scope and responsibilities of this role, the successful candidate will need the required clearance and license approvals to access country specific export-controlled information export-controlled data. Successful applicants will therefore be required to provide personal information to ensure compliance with export control requirements.
• The successful candidate is expected to occasionally travel overseas.

What you'll need

Essential Knowledge and Skills

• Science or Engineering university degree (min. 3 years),
• Experience in a related discipline in the space industry preferably in operations,
• Excellent communication skills in English, both written and spoken,
• Ability to prioritise work to deliver the Satellite Operations divisional objectives. This requires a high degree of flexibility in planning and executing work,
• Excellent analytical skills resulting in clear and concise explanations of observations and anomalies.

What will help you on the job

Desirable Knowledge and Skills

• Highly desirable to have experience in a satellite operations environment, preferably as an in-orbit spacecraft engineer,
• Preference for a degree in a Space Engineering related subject,
• Knowledge of design and operations of spacecraft subsystems, such as Power, Thermal, Attitude Control, Electrical and Chemical Propulsion, TTC and Payload subsystems,
• Experience of working with one or more of the following spacecraft platforms: Lockheed Martin (preferably Series 4000), TAS Spacebus 4000, Airbus E3000 and subsequent AIRBUS generations, Boeing 702 HP and MP+, Maxar FS1300 Omega generation spacecraft,
• General software/functional familiarity with Matlab, Excel, Tableau or similar related analytical tools,
• Knowledge of one or more programming languages (Python is the preference) to perform data analysis and data manipulation for trending, anomaly prediction and classification analysis and for developing and enhancing tools for aiding spacecraft engineering processes and procedures.
• Knowledge of GCP Vertex AI, BigQuery, GCP Dataflow, Model Garden platform of Vertex AI to customize, and deploy machine learning models of spacecraft subsystem performance and anomaly detection and prediction plus knowledge of Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab,
• Experience of working with spacecraft manufacturers and spacecraft engineering support teams for the specification, development and implementation of satellite specific operations for at least one previous geo-synchronous satellite project,
• Knowledge of the satellite design, build and AIT process.

EEO Statement

Viasat is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, seeking to create a welcoming and diverse environment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, genetics, age, or veteran status or any other applicable legally protected status or characteristic. If you would like to request an accommodation on the basis of disability for completing this on-line application, please click here .