{"id":732123,"url":"https://alion.io/job/sierra-space-p18621-principal-electrical-engineer-infrared-sensor-payloads","title":"P18621 Principal Electrical Engineer - Infrared Sensor Payloads","company":{"id":58801,"name":"Sierra Space","domain":"sierraspace.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/sierra-space","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":78,"open_postings":31,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.871,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":36,"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"}},"role":"Hardware","role_family":"Hardware","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Centennial, United States","Louisville, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":164164,"max":225725,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":225725},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":14,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":true},{"name":"MATLAB","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"Sensor Fusion","optional":true},{"name":"Verification & Validation","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-10T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-10","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T08:53:01Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":57,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":57},"description":"Sierra Space Careers:\nAt Sierra Space, we build the missions and systems that keep our world secure in the domain above Earth.\nSierra Space team members share a spirit of innovation and collaboration and a belief that we can deliver on the boldest missions in space today. Together with our customers, we aim to safeguard our nation, sustain human presence in space, and secure the freedom of operations in low Earth orbit and beyond.\nOur success is measured by the trust of those who rely on what we build and deliver, and our technologies keep the United States and its allies mission-ready throughout space.\nWe are mission-driven, and together, we are an extraordinary team.\nAbout the Role\nSierra Space is seeking a Principal Systems Engineer -Infrared Sensor Payloads to provide technical leadership and systems engineering oversight for advanced space-based infrared sensing capabilities supporting missile warning and missile tracking missions.In this role, you will serve as a senior technical authority for the infrared mission payload and associated missile detection, tracking, and mission-processing algorithms. You will work across payload suppliers, mission software and algorithms, spacecraft systems engineering, guidance/navigation/control, avionics, mission operations, and customer organizations to ensure delivery of an integrated sensing capability that meets demanding mission performance requirements.\nThe position will support proliferated low-Earth-orbit missile warning and tracking architectures similar to the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Tracking Layer. These missions combine space-based infrared sensing, onboard processing, advanced tracking algorithms, multi-sensor data fusion, and low-latency dissemination to provide persistent detection and tracking of conventional and advanced missile threats.\nThis is a highly interdisciplinary position requiring the ability to understand the complete sensing chain - from photons entering the payload through production of actionable missile track data - and to drive technical decisions across organizational and supplier boundaries.\nAbout You\nOur mission is driven by an unyielding commitment to advancing space-based technology in service of our customers and safeguarding national security. We seek individuals who are passionate about innovating beyond boundaries and relentlessly pursuing solutions that protect, preserve and empower - to join us in this critical mission.\nWe’re looking for team members who align with our values, mission and goals - while also meeting the minimum qualifications below. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.\nKey Responsibilities\nServe as the lead systems engineering interface and technical authority for the program’s infrared sensor payload, including requirements, architecture, interfaces, performance, development, integration, verification, and on-orbit performance.\nProvide technical oversight of payload supplier activities throughout the development lifecycle, including design reviews, technical interchange meetings, risk reviews, qualification, acceptance testing, and delivery.\nLead definition, decomposition, allocation, and verification of mission-level and payload-level requirements for missile warning and missile tracking performance.\nMaintain an end-to-end understanding of the sensor-to-track performance chain, including target phenomenology, backgrounds, optics, focal plane performance, detection processing, discrimination, tracking, estimation, data fusion, and mission data products.\nProvide technical leadership for development, review and verification of missile detection and tracking algorithms, including detection, association, track initiation, state estimation, track maintenance, discrimination, and multi-sensor or multi-spacecraft track fusion.\nWork closely with algorithm and software teams to translate mission performance requirements into algorithm requirements, interfaces, test objectives, and verification criteria.\nLead and review modeling, simulation, and analysis used to predict end-to-end mission performance across representative threat trajectories, viewing geometries, backgrounds, and operational scenarios.\nEvaluate infrared sensor performance including sensitivity, noise, dynamic range, spatial and temporal resolution, radiometric performance, calibration, line-of-sight knowledge, and other characteristics affecting missile detection and track quality.\nSupport development and validation of performance budgets and technical margins spanning the payload, spacecraft, mission processing, and tracking algorithms.\nEnsure appropriate allocation and management of spacecraft-to-payload interfaces, including electrical, mechanical, thermal, data, timing, pointing, jitter, line-of-sight knowledge, and onboard processing interfaces.\nWork closely with spacecraft GNC and systems engineering teams to ensure pointing knowledge, pointing control, stability, timing, and navigation performance support payload and mission-level track accuracy requirements.\nLead technical assessment and resolution of payload and algorithm anomalies, non-conformances, performance shortfalls, and emerging technical risks.\nDevelop and maintain technical risk and opportunity assessments for the payload and missile tracking capability and drive mitigation activities to closure.\nSupport payload integration and test, spacecraft-level testing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, mission simulations, calibration activities, and end-to-end mission verification.\nDefine and evaluate test scenarios and mission performance metrics used to demonstrate missile detection, tracking, and track-quality performance.\nSupport launch, early orbit operations, payload checkout, calibration, and on-orbit mission performance characterization.\nEvaluate on-orbit data and recommend changes to calibration, processing parameters, algorithms, or operational concepts to improve mission performance.\nServe as a primary technical interface with customers, payload suppliers, algorithm developers, and other mission partners for infrared sensing and missile tracking performance.\nPresent complex technical information, analyses, risks, and recommendations to program leadership, customers, suppliers, and senior technical review boards.\nMentor engineers and provide technical leadership across multidisciplinary teams without requiring direct organizational authority.\nAbout You\nOur mission requires engineers who can move comfortably between detailed technical analysis and system-level decision making. The successful candidate will be able to understand both the physics of infrared sensing and the systems engineering required to turn sensor measurements into operationally useful missile tracks.\nWe’re looking for team members who align with our values, mission, and goals while also meeting the minimum qualifications below. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.\nMinimum Requirements\nBachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline and typically 14 or more years of relevant experience.\nHigher-level degree may substitute for relevant experience; relevant technical experience may be considered in lieu of required education where appropriate.\nSignificant experience developing, integrating, or evaluating space-based electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor systems or comparable advanced remote-sensing systems.\nStrong systems engineering background including requirements development and decomposition, architecture development, interface definition, technical performance management, verification and validation, and risk management.\nExperience with infrared sensor or payload performance analysis, including the ability to understand the relationship between sensor characteristics and end-to-end mission performance.\nExperience with target detection, tracking, estimation, sensor fusion, or related mission-processing algorithms.\nDemonstrated ability to lead complex technical activities involving multiple engineering disciplines and external suppliers.\nExperience with modeling and simulation used to assess sensor, algorithm, or mission-level performance.\nExperience developing and presenting technical assessments and recommendations to engineering leadership, program management, customers, and technical review boards.\nAbility to work effectively in a fast-paced development environment with aggressive program schedules and significant technical complexity.\nAbility to obtain and maintain a Top Secret U.S. Government security clearance with SCI eligibility.\nPreferred Requirements\nActive Top Secret U.S. Government security clearance with SCI eligibility.\nExperience with space-based missile warning, missile tracking, missile defense, or overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) missions.\nExperience with the Space Development Agency Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), particularly the Tracking Layer.\nUnderstanding of missile and hypersonic threat phenomenology, infrared signatures, Earth and atmospheric backgrounds, and viewing geometry.\nExperience with wide-field-of-view infrared payloads used for persistent missile warning and tracking.\nKnowledge of infrared focal plane arrays, optical systems, radiometry, detector performance, calibration, image processing, and sensor characterization.\nExperience with missile tracking algorithms including detection, clustering, association, filtering, state estimation, track initiation/termination, discrimination, and multi-object tracking.\nExperience with estimation techniques such as Kalman filtering, extended/unscented Kalman filtering, multiple-model estimation, or related tracking methods.\nExperience with multi-sensor and multi-spacecraft track fusion, including generation of 3D track solutions from distributed sensing architectures.\nUnderstanding of track-quality metrics and their relationship to downstream warning, cueing, targeting, or fire-control applications.\nExperience developing or evaluating onboard mission processing architectures for latency-sensitive space missions.\nExperience with MATLAB, Python, C++, or comparable tools used for sensor and algorithm modeling, simulation, and data analysis.\nExperience with Monte Carlo mission performance analysis and statistically based verification approaches.\nExperience developing and executing hardware-in-the-loop or processor-in-the-loop mission simulations.\nKnowledge of spacecraft pointing, jitter, alignment, timing, navigation, and line-of-sight error sources and their effects on geolocation and missile track accuracy.\nExperience with payload-to-spacecraft integration and environmental qualification of spaceflight hardware.\nExperience supporting payload calibration, launch and early orbit operations, on-orbit checkout, or mission data analysis.\nExperience working with U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Space Force, Space Development Agency, Missile Defense Agency, or Intelligence Community space programs.\nExperience working within rapid acquisition or proliferated spacecraft programs where cost, schedule, production scalability, and technical performance must be balanced.\nTechnical Leadership Focus\nThe Principal Systems Engineer will be expected to maintain technical insight across three tightly coupled areas:\nInfrared Payload Performance\nUnderstand and drive the performance of the sensor itself, including optics, focal plane, electronics, calibration, radiometric performance, spatial/temporal performance, and payload interfaces.\nDetection & Tracking Algorithms\nProvide technical oversight of the processing chain that converts infrared observations into detections and persistent tracks, including algorithm performance, robustness, verification, and implementation constraints.\nEnd-to-End Mission Performance\nEnsure that the combined payload, spacecraft, algorithms, and mission archi...","description_format":"text","description_chars":14966,"description_truncated":true,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":14,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Life insurance","Professional development"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Space & Aerospace"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T10:00:44Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":24,"band":"cold","label":"Long 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