Why LeoLabs?

At LeoLabs, we’re building the living map of activity in space. Through our proprietary global radar network and AI-enabled analytics platform, we collect millions of measurements daily on more than 25,000 objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). Our radar-powered intelligence protects billions in assets, monitors adversarial behavior, and ensures safe operations for commercial and government missions.

We’re not just building technology, we are redefining global security, safety, and transparency in space. As orbital activity accelerates and threats grow more complex, LeoLabs is a trusted partner for Space Domain Awareness, Space Traffic Management, and Satellite Operations for top-tier space operators and allied defense organizations.

If you're looking to work on mission-critical challenges at the forefront of aerospace, national security, and AI, your impact starts here.

 

The Opportunity:

LeoLabs is seeking a talented individual to join our growing Launch and Orbit Support Team(LOST) as an Astrodynamics Engineer. This role is ideal for a hands-on subject matter expert who is equally comfortable developing algorithms as providing manual orbit support. The LOST team is responsible for supporting for our Launch and Early Operations (LEOP) products, delivering manual orbit determination (OD) support, and providing technical expertise to our Customer Success team. In this role, you will collaborate with a multidisciplinary team to ensure that short-timescale customer needs are met, while ensuring that tools are continually developed and improved to increase efficiency in the future.

 

What You’ll Do:

• Combine long-term tool development with rapid, short-term problem solving to ensure LeoLabs systems deliver high-quality orbital states for all objects in LEO, accurate measurements for high-priority targets, and timely analysis of high-interest orbital events.
• Develop, maintain, and continuously improve algorithms and workflows supporting manual Orbit Determination (OD), including radar tasking, measurement association, filter tuning, and validation of tracking data.
• Monitor and maintain orbit quality across the LEO catalog using internal tools and custom Python scripts.
• Participate in the team’s on-call rotation to maintain catalog orbit quality and respond to time-sensitive, anomalous, or high-impact events.
• Design, scale, and automate operational support tools to enable reliable real-time operations on large datasets and reduce manual effort.
• Define and track Service Level Indicators (SLIs) to quantitatively measure system performance and the impact of operational and algorithmic improvements.
• Provide real-time support for Launch and Early Operations (LEOP) products during orbital launches.
• Interface directly with satellite operations teams and other customers to tune performance, identify needs, and contribute to the development of new LEOP product features.
• Contribute to the creation and maintenance of technical documentation and training materials for orbit support tools and operational workflows.

 

Qualifications

• BS. in Astrodynamics, Aerospace, Physics, or a related technical field.
• Eligibility for U.S. security clearance.
• 3+ years of professional experience in modeling, simulation, and analysis, including space mission analysis and design, astrodynamics, or algorithm development.
• Significant, demonstrable experience developing production-quality software using Python or C/C++ and/or Java.
• Demonstrated professional experience in orbital mechanics or astrodynamics, including orbit design, analysis, or operations.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with Orbit Determination tools, especially using AGI ODTK.
• Prior experience in on-call rotations or operational support roles.
• Experience across a range of orbit mechanics and astrodynamics topics, such as constellation design, orbital propagation and perturbations, orbital maneuvers, launch vehicle and satellite operations, collision risk and debris analysis, rendezvous and proximity operations, formation flight, or space domain awareness.
• Experience with Statistical Orbit Determination.
• Experience developing, validating, and deploying nonlinear algorithms for high-reliability or mission-critical systems.
• Experience supporting or operating within complex data pipelines or real-time processing systems.
• Experience with Optimal Estimation, including nonlinear Kalman Filters.
• Demonstrated expertise in linear algebra and statistics.

 

Within 1 month, you’ll:

• Complete LeoLabs’ onboarding program to gain a solid understanding of our business, mission, and team culture.
• Become familiar with the Launch and Orbit Support Team and how it fits into the broader LeoLabs organization.
• Set up your local development environment and gain familiarity with our engineering stack and internal tools.
• Understand how our Launch and Early Operations (LEOP) and Orbit Determination systems are supported operationally.
• Join the orbit support team’s weekly on-call rotation.

 Within 3 months, you’ll:

• Take ownership of a small-to-medium feature, contributing from design through implementation.
• Be fully up to speed on the LeoLabs system architecture.
• Actively participate in code reviews and contribute to technical design discussions.
• Define a career growth plan in collaboration with your manager.

Within 6 months, you’ll:

• Have led a LEOP mission and supported multiple data product or orbit support cases.
• Interface regularly with the Customer Success team to understand, triage, and resolve support needs.
• Successfully deliver your first major project.
• Take ownership of additional projects or technical areas.
• Support the onboarding and mentoring of newer team members.

 Within 12 months, you’ll:

• Have successfully delivered several impactful projects.
• Consistently drive high-impact improvements to orbit support tools and operational workflows.
• Participate in the definition and planning of future LeoLabs projects.
• Help shape technical direction through design proposals, architectural input, and cross-team collaboration.