Who We Are:

Inversion builds advanced reentry systems to deliver next-generation capabilities from space.
 
Our mission is to make Earth radically more accessible by turning Low-Earth Orbit into an on-demand logistics domain. We see space not as a destination, but as a platform — one that unlocks unprecedented speed and global reach.
 
Our spacecraft are designed to deliver payloads anywhere on Earth in under an hour, operating through extreme reentry conditions and landing with high precision. These systems open the door to new ways of testing, delivering, and operating at hypersonic speeds.
 
Inherently dual-use, our technology is built to meet urgent national security needs while laying the groundwork for future commercial applications. Backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, Spark Capital, and Lockheed Martin Ventures, and working with partners such as the U.S. Space Force and NASA, Inversion is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in space-based defense and logistics.

What You’ll Do: 

As a member of our Mission Management team, you will serve as the primary point of contact for customers from early capabilities studies through launch, on-orbit operations, re-entry, and recovery. You will support new business proposals from initial requirements verification through mission design, vehicle development, and testing. You will work directly with the engineering team from diverse fields to quickly iterate on solutions and ensure customer requirements are met. 

Responsibilities: 

• Lead all programmatic aspects from contract award through integration, integrated test, launch, on-orbit operations, and re-entry, ensuring contract requirements are met. 
• Support multiple programs and competing priorities concurrently. 
• Support proposal efforts to align new efforts with long-term strategic vision and engineering objectives, and to ensure contract requirements are executable. 
• Interface with internal engineering, management, and production teams to ensure on-time execution and success of the mission. 
• Collaborate with engineering to understand vehicle readiness and how changes impact requirements, risk, and launch dates. 
• Work closely with the Business Development team to support proposal generation and coordinate mission activities with overall business activities. 
• Lead technical projects from contract signature through mission completion. 
• Work with the customer to mitigate and resolve technical and programmatic issues that arise with a success-oriented approach and resolution. 

Required Qualifications: 

• Minimum of a bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline. 
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work in a multi-disciplinary engineering team building space-flight hardware. 
• Experience acting as the primary interface of a company and program to an external customer. 
• Typically 9+ years of experience in program management, project management, systems engineering, or operations with a focus on customer experience. 
• Proven ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment.
• Demonstrated excellent verbal and written communication skills. 

Desired Qualifications: 

• Master’s degree in an engineering discipline. 
• Experience in working with government customers or acquisitions. 
• 12+ years applicable experience. 
• Strong interpersonal skills, and an ability to tailor communications to the audience. 
• Exceptional leadership, organizational, team building, and people management skills. 
• Excellent technical writing skills especially involving multi-party interface specifications. 
• Excellent communication skills to deal with the customer at the technical and management level as well as the internal engineering team. 

Our office headquarters is located in Playa Vista, CA. This position requires in office presence.

_{The California annual base salary for this role is currently $161,000 - $221,000.  Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data.  Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.} 

Who We Are:

Inversion builds advanced reentry systems to deliver next-generation capabilities from space.
 
Our mission is to make Earth radically more accessible by turning Low-Earth Orbit into an on-demand logistics domain. We see space not as a destination, but as a platform — one that unlocks unprecedented speed and global reach.
 
Our spacecraft are designed to deliver payloads anywhere on Earth in under an hour, operating through extreme reentry conditions and landing with high precision. These systems open the door to new ways of testing, delivering, and operating at hypersonic speeds.
 
Inherently dual-use, our technology is built to meet urgent national security needs while laying the groundwork for future commercial applications. Backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, Spark Capital, and Lockheed Martin Ventures, and working with partners such as the U.S. Space Force and NASA, Inversion is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in space-based defense and logistics.

Position Overview: 
We're looking for a Director or Senior Director of Mission Products & Payload Integration to lead this new organization. You'll sit at the intersection of engineering, product, mission design, and customer needs — defining and building the technical products that make Arc valuable: payload bay architectures, mounting solutions, trajectory and mission design offerings, and the avionics and software interfaces that make payload integration seamless. 

This is a strategic and hands-on leadership role. The ideal candidate combines deep aerospace engineering judgment with strong product instincts, customer empathy, and the ability to lead high-performing teams. You should have a strong sense for what hypersonic test customers, defense customers, and advanced payload developers will want to fly — and how their payloads need to interface mechanically, electrically, thermally, and digitally with Arc. 

Key Responsibilities: 

Product & Roadmap Leadership 

• Define and own the technical roadmap for Arc's mission product layer — payload integration, mission design, and customer-facing capabilities 
• Identify new product opportunities driven by customer demand across hypersonic testing, defense, space systems, materials, sensors, communications, and other advanced aerospace fields 
• Drive roadmap execution through engineering, from concept through flight 

Payload Bay & Accommodation 

• Own Arc's payload bay design strategy and accommodation approach 
• Define standard payload envelopes, mounting solutions, modular interface concepts, and environmental constraints 
• Develop separation and deployment options and customer-specific integration approaches 
• Partner with vehicle engineering to translate customer needs into robust, manufacturable, flight-ready interfaces 

Mission Design & Analysis 

• Lead development of customer-facing mission design capabilities: trajectory design, mission analysis, flight environment characterization, launch vehicle integration, and CONOPS development 
• Collaborate across GNC, flight software, avionics, structures, thermal, propulsion, recovery, business development, and program teams 

Payload Interface Ecosystem 

• Define the avionics, software, data, and customer interface ecosystem that enables efficient payload integration 
• Deliver payload electrical interfaces, command and data handling, and telemetry access 
• Build mission planning tools, software APIs, test equipment, integration documentation, and customer onboarding workflows 

Customer Engagement 

• Serve as one of Arc's primary technical voices with customers — communicating capabilities, shaping mission concepts, and advancing customer objectives 
• Work directly with business development to identify patterns across customer payloads and translate them into scalable product offerings 

Team Building & Leadership 

• Recruit, manage, and develop a multidisciplinary team owning mission products end-to-end 
• Team may include mission designers, systems engineers, payload integration engineers, mechanical engineers, avionics/software interface engineers, and technical product leads 
• Set technical direction, manage priorities, and build a culture of creativity, accountability, and excellence 

Required Qualifications: 

• 10+ years of applicable experience 
• Deep aerospace engineering background across spacecraft, launch vehicles, reentry vehicles, missiles, hypersonics, aircraft, or advanced defense systems  
• Proven experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams through complex product development, system integration, test, and flight operations  
• Experience with payload integration, mission design, systems engineering, avionics or mechanical interfaces, launch integration, or flight test programs  
• Technical depth to make sound architectural decisions across mechanical, electrical, software, thermal, GNC, trajectory, and operational domains  
• Strong product instincts — ability to turn ambiguous customer needs into clean, repeatable technical offerings  
• Understanding of how aerospace customers think about payloads, test objectives, mission assurance, flight environments, data collection, and integration risk  
• Excellent communication skills, especially translating complex engineering into clear customer-facing options 

Our office headquarters is located in Playa Vista, CA. This position requires in office presence.

_{The California annual base salary for this role is currently $180,000 - 260,000. Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data.  Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.} 

Who We Are:

Inversion builds advanced reentry systems to deliver next-generation capabilities from space.
 
Our mission is to make Earth radically more accessible by turning Low-Earth Orbit into an on-demand logistics domain. We see space not as a destination, but as a platform — one that unlocks unprecedented speed and global reach.
 
Our spacecraft are designed to deliver payloads anywhere on Earth in under an hour, operating through extreme reentry conditions and landing with high precision. These systems open the door to new ways of testing, delivering, and operating at hypersonic speeds.
 
Inherently dual-use, our technology is built to meet urgent national security needs while laying the groundwork for future commercial applications. Backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, Spark Capital, and Lockheed Martin Ventures, and working with partners such as the U.S. Space Force and NASA, Inversion is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in space-based defense and logistics. 

What You’ll Do:

As a Flight Safety Analyst at Inversion, you will play a critical role in the mission design and regulatory certification of our reentry vehicles. You will own the flight safety analysis that enables our vehicles to safely transition from orbit back to Earth. Your work will directly support licensing efforts and ensure that our flight operations comply with safety standards. You will be a key member of the Missions team, responsible for the analysis behind our flight safety products. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Develop and maintain internal tools in Python and/or MATLAB for flight safety analysis and trajectory simulation. 

• Generate high-fidelity flight corridors for both orbital reentry and hypersonic suborbital flight profiles. 

• Conduct 3DOF and 6DOF trajectory analysis to assess vehicle performance, safety margins, and risk profiles. 

• Perform Expected Casualty (Ec) calculations and risk assessments to satisfy range and regulatory requirements. 

• Utilize POST2 for mission trajectory generation and flight safety analysis. 

• Author technical documents and Means of Compliance (MOC) to support FAA Part 450 licensing and other regulatory filings. 

• Interface with flight safety systems to ensure mission requirements and safety constraints are met. 

• Collaborate with GNC, reentry, and mission operations teams to define safety-critical mission parameters. 

Required Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field. 

• 9+ years of professional experience in flight safety analysis, trajectory analysis, or mission design for aerospace vehicles. 

• Proficiency in 3DOF and 6DOF trajectory generation and simulation. 

• Direct experience with POST2 or similar high-fidelity trajectory analysis tools. 

• Strong programming skills in Python and/or MATLAB for tool development and data processing. 

• Familiarity with FAA Part 450 regulations and RCC 319 standards. 

• Proven ability to write clear, concise technical documentation for regulatory compliance. 

• Knowledge of flight safety systems and their application to reentry or launch vehicles. 

Desired Qualifications 

• Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering or a related field. 

• Experience working directly with range safety organizations or regulatory bodies (e.g., FAA-AST, Wallops, or Vandenberg). 

• Demonstrated experience in calculating risk metrics for complex or novel flight profiles. 
• Background in Monte Carlo analysis and uncertainty quantification for mission safety. 

Our office headquarters is located in Playa Vista, CA. This position requires in office presence.

_{The California annual base salary for this role is currently $165,000-$236,000.  Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data.  Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.}