Senior Mission Systems Engineer Lead -… at Stellar… · Chantilly

Overview

Stellar Solutions, a nationally recognized “Great Place To Work,” delivers engineering solutions across commercial space and national security missions—from innovative new entrants to established space systems organizations.

We bring talented, energetic, and immediately productive professionals to meet critical customer needs in systems engineering and integration, mission operations, program management, and strategic planning—helping teams deliver resilient capability to the mission with speed, quality, and focus.

Stellar Solutions is seeking a Senior Mission Integration SME to support a proposed Environmental Monitoring mission area within a broader Space-Based Sensing and Tracking enterprise. This role provides senior operational mission expertise, mission integration, CONOPS development, mission-thread analysis, effects-chain analysis, and cross-domain integration support for government customers standing up and scaling space-based sensing capabilities. The position is designed for an operationally credible expert who can connect technical capabilities to operational outcomes and help the customer understand how Environmental Monitoring data supports mission decisions, effects chains, operational users, and enterprise-level integration.

Role/Responsibilities/Qualifications

This is a senior mission integration role supporting Environmental Monitoring and related space-based sensing mission areas. The role works across government leadership, program office teams, mission systems engineers, digital engineering architects, acquisition stakeholders, contractors, and end-user communities to align capabilities, mission threads, and operational outcomes.

Key responsibilities include:

• Serve as a senior mission integration subject matter expert supporting Environmental Monitoring and related space-based sensing mission areas.
• Develop and refine mission threads, operational use cases, CONOPS, effects chains, and cross-domain integration approaches.
• Translate Environmental Monitoring mission needs into actionable requirements, architecture inputs, acquisition priorities, operational workflows, and user-facing outcomes.
• Support integration of sensing capabilities across space, ground, data processing, dissemination, operational users, and decision-makers.
• Advise customer leadership on how Environmental Monitoring capabilities can support ISR, GEOINT, disaster response, maritime monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, climate/environmental intelligence, domain awareness, and national security mission needs.
• Support Define-Assess-Forecast-Build activities by identifying mission competency gaps, operational integration risks, user needs, and scaling priorities.
• Work with systems engineers and digital engineering architects to ensure mission threads and effects-chain analyses are represented in technical baselines, models, requirements, and architecture products.
• Assess inherited or existing programs to determine whether capabilities, data products, operational workflows, and user interfaces align to mission outcomes.
• Support cross-mission alignment across Environmental Monitoring, AMTI, GMTI, Futures, Space Data Network, or other SBST lines of effort where mission dependencies overlap.
• Participate in technical reviews, mission reviews, readiness assessments, requirements reviews, integration planning, and operational transition activities.
• Define operational acceptance criteria, mission utility measures, data-quality expectations, latency needs, dissemination requirements, and user adoption considerations.
• Prepare executive-level briefings, mission assessments, operational recommendations, and decision-support materials.

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years of operational mission, mission integration, ISR, GEOINT, remote sensing, space-based sensing, Environmental Monitoring, national security space, or government mission-support experience.
• Experience supporting operational CONOPS, mission threads, effects chains, mission integration, user needs analysis, operational transition, or cross-domain mission alignment.
• Experience with Environmental Monitoring, Earth observation, remote sensing, SAR, radar/RF sensing, GEOINT, ISR, weather, ocean, maritime, disaster response, land monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, or related mission areas.
• Prior support to mission environments such as NGA, NRO, USSF, SSC, SDA, AFRL, MDA, DoD, IC, NOAA, NESDIS, NASA, USGS, or related federal customers.
• Ability to work across operators, technical teams, acquisition organizations, contractors, data users, and senior government leaders.
• Strong ability to translate between operational mission needs and technical/acquisition execution.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with radar-based Environmental Monitoring, SAR-derived data, commercial satellite data, GEOINT data products, ISR mission integration, or operational remote sensing.
• Experience developing or supporting operational CONOPS, tactics/techniques/procedures, mission workflows, transition-to-operations plans, operational acceptance criteria, or user engagement strategies.
• Familiarity with mission-data delivery, data dissemination, exploitation, sensor-to-user timelines, latency, track/data quality, operational readiness, and mission-effectiveness measures.
• Experience supporting SETA, FFRDC, government advisory, operational mission support, or acquisition-adjacent mission integration contracts.
• Experience contributing to digital engineering or mission engineering efforts through mission thread development, effects-chain analysis, use-case definition, or operational viewpoints.

Clearance & Additional Requirements

• Active security clearance

Location

This position is located in Chantilly, Virginia

Deliverable(s)

Deliverables will be in the format of reports, briefings, spreadsheets, or other documents as directed by the Government, using Government-approved and/or mandated systems/software and processes governed by guidance/instructions/policy or direction. The nature of this work will, at times, require quick responses to stringent deadlines and always in a high-quality, professional manner.