Head of GNC

ClearSpace

Switzerland

The CTO office defines, develops and tests internal products to satisfy the Programs (also called Services), and includes R&D. It ensures product consistency among executed programs. It supports the sales process, including the Commercial (CBO) and Strategy (CSO) bids and activities. It defines and develops the technical infrastructures and tools to support the products development. It implements the ClearSpace PA/QA, Safety, PM and Engineering standards. It is responsible for the timely delivery of the internal products to the Programs.

As the Head of GNC you will be part of the CTO office and will report directly to the CTO. We are looking for an experienced, confident leader who has held a senior position before and displays a strong balance of technical acumen, management skills and stakeholder management skills. As a “Head of…”, the generic Role and Responsibilities are just below. For the GNC, at the beginning, you will strongly support the GNC Subsystem Leads that are people from your Team assigned to Programs

Role:

Supervising the output from their Team to reach defined objectives;
Interfacing between the Executive Management and their Team;
Supporting the definition of services, generation of proposals and interacting with clients;
Allocating manpower resources to Programs and internal activities;
Defining and bidding for funding opportunities to support internal activities;
Attending internal or Program-related reviews;
With HR support and guidance…:
- Hiring, onboarding and developing new staff;
- Defining professional development plans and identifying training needs;
- Setting goals and conducting periodic staff performance reviews;
- Approving vacations and ensuring adequate backfills are in place;
- Monitoring happiness levels!

Responsibilities:

Defining and developing internal Products (subsystem, equipment, …) and technical Building Blocks within the domain;
Ensuring a consistency of approach, methodology and tools across different Programs and commercial/strategy verticals;
Establishing roadmaps, and maximizing opportunities to follow them within funding opportunities;
Surveying technologies, research activities and R&D funding opportunities;
Promoting innovative ideas (sound and crazy ideas!);
Promoting the sharing of best practices and lessons learned;
Providing appropriately experienced staff needed to execute programs and internal activities;
Providing cost estimates for future activities (and ensuring they are stuck to!);
Defining, implementing and maintaining infrastructure, test facilities, tools and simulations.

Essential Experience:

Experience of GNC algorithm design e.g. navigation filters, guidance strategies and/or controllers;
Experience designing fault-tolerant GNC systems e.g. fault-tolerant algorithm/software design;
Knowledge and experience of GNC rendezvous and pose estimation sensors and methods;
Experience of satellite trajectory design and analysis e.g. walking safety ellipses, passively safe trajectories, abort manoeuvres and collision avoidance manoeuvres;
Experience of GNC hardware integration and test;
Experience with software packages commonly used for aerospace simulations e.g. MATLAB/Simulink and Python;
Experience of programming in C/C++;
10+ years experience within GNC;
Leadership/Management experience.

Desired Experience:

Knowledge of missions concerning active debris removal or RPO;
Practical working knowledge of digital electronics relevant to a GNC system (communications protocols, satellite Command & Data Handling, digital integration to enable Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing etc.);
Experience of on-orbit GNC analysis, debug and refinement.