As a Mission Manager you will work with customers and engineering teams to ensure the successful execution of our customer’s mission. Your role will require working with multiple customers in parallel inclusive of U.S. and international commercial companies and governments. As a relatively young company, you get to play a large role in the early history of Vast and ultimately make this position into what it should be. This role is for a hands-on person with great attention to detail, impeccable organization, and excellent people skills. A successful Mission Manager is one who can apply their technical and leadership expertise to accomplish the mission while providing the Customer with the experience that makes them want to work with Launcher again.

Responsibilities:

• Control all aspects of a given Vast mission, and be ultimately responsible for end-to-end mission success.
• Be able to support multiple customers per launch and multiple concurrent launch programs.
• Understand and apply your technical background to the benefit of the mission and be adept at working and solving technical issues on a near daily basis.
• Lead new 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 passion for resolution.
• Interface with internal engineering, management, and production teams to ensure on-time execution of the mission while meeting all customer requirements.
• Collaborate with engineering and production groups to understand vehicle readiness and how changes impact requirements, vehicle risk, and launch dates.
• Work with Supply Chain and Engineering to procure mission specific hardware.
• Work closely with Business Development to support proposal generation and coordinate mission activities with overall business activities in a sales engineer role.
• Manage the customer and third parties as needed on contractual and technical issues through the course of the programs.
• Provide a positive image of Launcher to the customer and the industry at all times.

Minimum Qualifications:

• BS degree in Engineering or Science.
• 3+ years of professional project management experience in the Aerospace industry.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• MS degree in Engineering or Science.
• Professional experience working with launch vehicles and small satellites.
• In-depth knowledge of the CubeSat design reference and small spacecraft launch interfaces.
• Excellent technical writing skills especially involving multi-party interface specifications.
• Strong negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills.
• Highly detail-oriented and experience working with cross-functional teams and external customers.
• Passion for small satellites as well as advancing the commercial space industry.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced and demanding start-up atmosphere.
• Ability to thrive as a ‘one-person team’.
• Excellent communication skills to deal with the customer at the technical and management level as well as our internal engineering and production team.
• Available to work extended hours and/or weekends as needed to support critical milestones or operations shifts as the mission requires.
• Willing to travel to launch sites, test sites, and customer locations throughout the United States and abroad as needed.
• Ability to earn trust, maintain positive and professional relationships, and contribute to a culture of inclusion.

Additional Requirements:

• Willingness to travel up to 15% of the time.