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# Spacecraft System Architect Lead

- **Company:** STOKE Space Technologies
- **Location:** Stokes, NC, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $151,305 - $252,105
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Network Interface Controllers, Iterative and Incremental Development, Software Requirements Analysis, Systems Architecture, Integration Tests
- **Published:** October 26, 2026
- **Apply:** https://startup.jobs/spacecraft-system-architect-lead-stoke-space-technologies-10547448

## About the Role

* Bachelor's degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, physics or a related field.
 * 10+ years of spacecraft or launch vehicle engineering experience, including at least one spacecraft carried from concept through on-orbit operations.
 * Experience as a chief engineer, system architect, vehicle lead or equivalent accountable technical role on a spacecraft or stage.
 * Exceptional command of fundamentals in one or more of structures, propulsion, thermal, power, GNC, avionics or software, and the ability to apply first-order analysis across all of them.
 * Demonstrated ability to make rapid, well-reasoned architectural decisions across disciplines with incomplete information.
 * Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
 * Ability to lead and to follow., * Flight heritage on a long-duration spacecraft (GEO, MEO, cislunar or multi-year LEO) where thermal, power, radiation and propellant management over the mission life drove the design.
 * Experience with atmospheric reentry, aerobraking or other atmospheric flight phases of a space vehicle.
 * Exposure to high-delta-v maneuvering, rendezvous and proximity operations, or refueling.
 * Shipped flight hardware on a startup timeline, at a company or within a team where you made the architectural trades yourself rather than inherited them.
 * Production-rate or constellation bus experience (cost per unit, factory mindset) in addition to bespoke performance.
 * Experience with national-security space customers and the demonstration-to-program path.
 * Experience with storable or green chemical propulsion, electric propulsion, or refueling interfaces.
 * Experience leading or managing engineering teams.
 * Master's degree or PhD in aerospace engineering or a related field.

## Description

As Spacecraft System Architect Lead you are one of the founding technical members of this new team. You will take customer input and business goals and turn them into a conceptual system architecture, a concept of operations, system requirements and a product breakdown, then carry that architecture through detailed design, build, test, flight and on-orbit operations. You will make the early cross-disciplinary trades (propulsion, GNC, power, thermal, structures, avionics, software, ground) with limited information and own the consequences, on vehicles that must work for years, not hours. You will decide what we build, what we buy and what we partner for, and you will help grow the team around the product. You will learn from integrated test and flight and feed it back into the next architecture. You must be ready to stay focused, move fast, self-direct, and learn on the fly., * Translate customer and business objectives into system concepts, ConOps, functional capabilities and system requirements for the group's products.

 * Develop the product breakdown and perform first-order analysis across every discipline to size the system and estimate mass, power, cost and performance with incomplete information.
 * Make the early cross-disciplinary trades (propulsion, GNC, power, thermal, structures, avionics, software, ground) with limited information, and carry them through architecture and design reviews.
 * Establish design margins, reliability targets and an incremental development path from first demonstration to production.
 * Define interfaces to Nova and to customer systems; select and manage external partners for major subsystems, owning requirements, interface control and acceptance.
 * Support the full product lifecycle: detailed design, integration, test, launch and on-orbit operations; feed lessons learned back into the next architecture.
 * Be the technical face of the product with customers and partners alongside Stoke's business development team.
 * Act as program lead for schedule, budget and risk through first flight, and help grow the engineering team as the product matures.