Third-party recruiters: Please do not contact us about this role.

Chief Engineer

At ICEYE, we design, build and operate the largest fleet of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites in the world. Using advanced technology, our constellation collects topographical data about any location on Earth, day or night, through any weather conditions.

Headquartered in Southern California, our customers are society’s heroes – intelligence professionals, warfighters, first responders, and scientific researchers. As a trusted mission partner, the United States and its allies depend on us for critical information when it matters most.

Role Description

ICEYE US is developing next-generation spaceborne payloads and needs a Chief Engineer to own full product-level technical authority from mission concept through flight readiness and delivery. This role sits within the Space Systems team as the single point of technical accountability for the payload program — responsible for system architecture, requirements baseline, cross-disciplinary technical decisions, and verification completeness.

The chief engineer will work daily with subsystem Responsible Engineers, RF, digital, and mechanical design teams, software, and program leadership to ensure the payload is designed, built, and verified to meet mission objectives. This is a deeply technical leadership role — the chief engineer will drive architectural decisions, resolve cross-disciplinary conflicts, chair lifecycle reviews, and represent the program as the primary technical counterpart to the customer.

Responsibilities

Own the product-level technical baseline, including system architecture, operating modes, interface definitions, and requirements; approve all changes to the baseline.

Set technical direction and align subsystem teams to system-level objectives and constraints.

Serve as the primary technical authority for all lifecycle reviews — SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, MRR, and FRR — and determine technical readiness to proceed through each gate.

Resolve cross-disciplinary technical conflicts and approve major trade-study outcomes using input from the Systems Engineer and subsystem Responsible Engineers.

Own the product-level technical risk register; determine whether risks are accepted, mitigated, or escalated to program leadership.

Ensure requirements verification is complete and traceable before delivery; hold accountability for V&V closure across the full payload stack.

Establish and track system-level Technical Performance Measures (mass, power, thermal, link, data rate budgets); flag margin erosion and drive resolution.

Lead or oversee FMEA and reliability analyses at system and subsystem level; identify single-point failures and drive redundancy or mitigation decisions.

Own the fault management architecture including FDIR strategies, safe modes, and anomaly response aligned to mission ConOps.

Represent the program as the primary technical counterpart to the customer; own all customer-facing technical communications and commitments.

Required Qualifications

10+ years of systems or aerospace engineering experience on space, radar, or avionics programs, with at least 3 years in a chief engineer, lead systems engineer, or equivalent technical authority role.

Demonstrated experience leading formal lifecycle reviews (PDR, CDR, TRR, FRR) as the primary technical authority.

5+ years of hands-on experience with requirements decomposition, management, and verification closure on flight hardware programs.

5+ years of experience leading FMEAs, reliability analyses, and fault management design for flight hardware.

Expertise in radar systems.

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related field.

Preferred Qualifications

Background in fault management / FDIR design for LEO or MEO missions.

Understanding of embedded and flight software (FPGA, real-time OS, command/telemetry protocols).

Experience with avionics bus.

Exposure to NASA systems engineering standards (NPR 7123.1) or equivalent (DO-178, ECSS).