Lead Ground Systems Engineer (ESS-SR)
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 30, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 22, 2026.
Overview
Stellar Solutions, a nationally recognized “Great Place To Work”, has exciting opportunities providing Engineering solutions for innovative new-entrant space companies, as well as established space systems manufacturers, commercial space system operators and service providers, and other industry stakeholders including investors.
At Stellar Solutions, we offer talented, energetic, and immediately productive resources to satisfy our customers’ critical needs in systems engineering and integration, mission operations, program management and strategic planning. We are a leading service and expertise provider for high-tech commercial ventures, spanning communications, earth observation and remote sensing systems and data products, to the infrastructures that support earth orbiting and beyond earth orbit businesses.
Stellar Solutions has an opportunity for a Senior Ground Systems Engineer to lead, guide, and provide Systems Engineering and Technical Advisory services for a government customer in Aurora, CO.
Role/Responsibilities/Qualifications
The successful candidate will:
- Lead and oversee technical efforts of four systems engineers providing enterprise-wide, high-impact systems engineering services for SIGINT, GEOINT, and Operations Center ground systems
- Develop technical requirements for SIGINT and GEOINT ground processing system updates, monitor and supervise scheduling of system deliveries, system testing and documentation of discrepancies
- Anticipate, assign, drive projects and customer requirements to closure; continually assess team’s tasks, realign/reprioritize/augment assignments as appropriate
- Work with government managers program leadership to organize and plan ground team support; maintain awareness of government’s evolving needs and proactively provide analysis, insights, recommendations to improve delivery of services and/or exploit opportunity to enhance process or resource effectiveness or efficiency
- Provide technical support to government points of contacts; identify and communicate status, risks, issues, opportunities, assumptions, mitigations, and dependencies for ground system activities
- Promote and facilitate collaboration with government, SETA team members, and other contractors supporting the government - across the enterprise
- Develop assessments and staffing products for a variety of audiences, convey information in a clear and articulate manner to Government leadership
QUALIFICATIONS
Required:
- US Citizenship
- Active TS/SCI clearance with polygraph
- Bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) and 14 years or more experience; Master’s in STEM field and 12 years or more experience; PhD or JD in STEM and nine (9) years or more experience. *STEM is a contractual requirement
- Demonstrated leadership success on variety of complex ground systems engineering projects impacting mission operations
- In-depth experience with NRO systems engineering and mission readiness processes; familiar with readiness events, control gates, and associated entry/exit criteria; systems engineering governance
- Knowledge of GEOINT and SIGINT overall space and ground architecture including mission management, mission control and mission processing functions
- Program lifecycle experience from concept development and design to deployment, operations, and maintenance, decommission
- CONOPS requirements development, interface control documentation, technical specification review, architecture development
- Experience in systems development methodologies (e.g Agile, DevOps, Spiral, Waterfall, etc.) and cloud technologies
- Self-starter, proactively addresses customer requirements with no supervision; expert at defining solutions for broad, abstract topics-drives tasks to closure
- Polished communicator (written/verbal); impeccable interpersonal skills and personal judgment
- Master at collaboration and coordination with multiple stakeholders -- consensus builder
- Proficient with MS Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel), MS Outlook, MS Project)
Desired:
- Experience with Digital Engineering (DE)/Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and associated tools.
- Real-time operations experience as a spacecraft or ground systems operator
- SAFe, Agile, INCOSE certifications
- Proficient with MS Project
Compensation
The typical salary pay range for this position is USD $150,000 - $175,000. Individual pay is determined by many factors including work location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.
In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for a comprehensive total rewards package that includes an annual performance bonus, an employer-funded Profit-Sharing Plan (PSP) contribution based on base compensation, and comprehensive employer-paid medical benefits, PTO pay-out options, along with additional company-sponsored benefits. All of these benefits represent an additional 30-40% to your base compensation for a total compensation package.
Deliverable(s)
Deliverables will be in the format of reports, briefings, spreadsheets, or other documents as directed by the Government. The nature of the work will, at times, require a quick response to stringent deadlines and always in a high quality, professional manner.