Systems Engineer Mission Integration

SSI is seeking a Systems Engineer Mission Integration for a role in Albuquerque, NM. 

 

We are seeking an experienced Systems Engineer to work directly with Government mission leaders and program teams delivering critical space and defense capabilities. This role is intentionally broad. The engineer may move between mission analysis, architecture, interfaces, technical planning, integration, testing, troubleshooting, risk reduction, and transition activities as program needs evolve.

The engineer will help translate operational priorities into executable technical work, connect independently governed efforts, expose weak assumptions, and create the evidence leaders need for timely decisions. Success requires sound technical judgment, intellectual curiosity, disciplined follow-through, and the ability to build trusted relationships across teams with different responsibilities, schedules, and views of the mission architecture. Government decision owners retain all formal authority. 

 

• Translate mission needs into technical action. Clarify the operational outcome, mission thread, user workflow, constraints, dependencies, and evidence required for the next technical or acquisition decision.
• Develop and assess architectures. Create, evaluate, and communicate architecture options, functional boundaries, interfaces, data flows, external dependencies, operational concepts, and technical baselines for complex multi-system capabilities.
• Solve cross-disciplinary problems. Analyze issues spanning hardware, software, networks, data, cybersecurity, operations, test, infrastructure, and sustainment; identify likely causes, consequences, corrective options, and the evidence needed to proceed.
• Integrate independently governed efforts. Work across program offices, technical teams, operators, laboratories, test organizations, security stakeholders, and industry partners to align interfaces, assumptions, commitments, and delivery timing.
• Build trusted technical relationships. Understand each team's objectives and constraints, communicate facts without blame, follow through on commitments, and use technical credibility to influence decisions without relying on formal authority.
• Frame decision-ready trade space. Compare options across mission effect, performance, cost, schedule, interoperability, cybersecurity, integration complexity, sustainment, time-to-field, and production scalability.
• Design rapid learning activities. Define focused analyses, demonstrations, interface events, prototypes, simulations, and knowledge points that test critical assumptions and expose risk before expensive commitment.
• Connect analysis to integration. Translate studies and design decisions into interface agreements, integration criteria, configuration boundaries, data exchanges, test objectives, action owners, and executable milestones.
• Support testing and operational acceptance. Plan or participate in reviews, laboratory events, mission-thread tests, demonstrations, user evaluations, anomaly resolution, and acceptance activities that confirm the combined capability is usable.
• Preserve modularity and options. Advance open interfaces, modular increments, replaceable components, appropriate data-rights objectives, and competitive technical paths that reduce lock-in and allow capabilities to evolve.
• Synchronize technical delivery. Maintain clear views of dependencies, readiness, risks, decisions, evidence, and technical milestones; identify where work should accelerate, resequence, narrow, pause, or protect schedule margin to preserve an integration window.
• Produce decision-focused products. Develop concise technical papers, architecture and interface views, trade studies, risk and opportunity assessments, integration roadmaps, test summaries, briefings, and action records that move stakeholders to the next decision.
• Lead defined technical efforts. Facilitate technical meetings, coordinate contributors, challenge unsupported assumptions, mentor less-experienced teammates, surface blockers early, and maintain accountability through delivery.

• Master's degree in a relevant technical, operational, data, cybersecurity, acquisition, or management discipline.
• Experience with space mission capabilities such as Satellite Control, telemetry, tracking and control, command and control, mission management, communications, ground systems, or space-ground integration.
• Experience with modular open architectures, interface standards, application programming interfaces, data models, interoperability, configuration boundaries, and replaceable capability increments.
• Experience using mission modeling, simulation, digital integration environments, data analytics, automation, dashboards, or other tools to accelerate technical learning and decision quality.
• Experience with competitive prototyping, commercial products, rapid capability maturation, focused demonstrations, or other acquisition approaches that preserve options and shorten time-to-field.
• Experience connecting technical delivery to operational acceptance, training, infrastructure, cybersecurity, continuity, sustainment, production, or fielding considerations.
• Experience assessing cross-program schedules, integration windows, technical maturity, industrial capacity, production scalability, or transition risk at the portfolio level.
• Credentials in architecture, integration, software, networks, cybersecurity, testing, data analytics, acquisition, program leadership, or product delivery.