Space Protection Mission Engineer

Job ID: 2600199

Location: CHANTILLY, VA, US

Date Posted: 2026-01-08

Category: Engineering and Sciences

Subcategory: Systems Engineer

Schedule: Full-time

Shift: Day Job

Travel: No

Minimum Clearance Required: TS/SCI with Poly

Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain: None

Potential for Remote Work: No

Description

SAIC is seeking a Space Protection Mission Engineer to join the Air Force, Space and Intelligence Business Group providing systems engineering and technical advisory services to a rapidly expanding Government Intelligence Community (IC) customer. The customer is developing the next generation of space and ground systems, architectures, and hardware and software solutions.

The Space Protection Mission Engineer will serve as the subject matter expert (SME) and System Program Office (SPO) representative coordinating with the development contractor and stakeholders (including end user operators) for deployment of new protection capabilities into space operations. The Space Protection Mission Engineer collaborates within a team of mission-related SMEs to coordinate system development, requirements verification testing (and sell-off), identification of discrepancies, and mission validation testing.

The Space Protection Mission Engineer responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• SPO's external liaison lead providing oversight of all liaison efforts to ensure enterprise support requirements are captured, tracked, and prioritized; interfaces are identified; and necessary planning is performed to meet enterprise commitments and deliver needed space protection capabilities.
• Coordinate with external SPOs to develop a common space protection concept of operations that identifies capability requirements and required interfaces to enable satisfaction of their unique protection needs, while simultaneously liaising, as required, to build relationships and manage expectations.
• Advocate for enterprise capability needs at developer working groups, SPO's internal decision forums, and other technical meetings to facilitate achieving capability delivery commitments.
• Shape strategy recommendations to include engineering and acquisition trades that meet enterprise's demand for space protection capabilities within the program's development priorities and budget profile.
• Serves as a SPO technical expert providing oversight for software development, implementation, and deployment of ground processing system capabilities that are integrated with the NRO space enterprise.
• Collaborate with other SMEs to develop technical plans and documentation, advise the customer on technical progress of the acquisition, and support the integration of ground processing systems with space systems.
• Support the Contracting Officer Technical Representative(s) and developers to refine requirements, designs, and testing capabilities to meet user needs.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's and 9 or more years of experience; master's and 7 or more years of experience; PhD and 4 or more years of experience.
• Active Top Secret/SCI clearance with Poly.
• 3+ years' experience using or developing space and/or ground software systems.
• Experience in Government System Engineering disciplines, including requirements development and management, readiness, and testing.
• Experience with Requirements Management tools.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience in space domain awareness system development and/or operations.
• Experience developing, testing, or fielding space systems.
• Familiarity with NRO's System's Engineering Directorate (SED) and its Requirements. Development/Management, RFC, and Lifecycle Readiness processes.
• Familiarity with Agile development methodologies to include participation in scrums, development of solution epics/features, and continuous integration/continuous deployment.
• Familiarity with Confluence and JIRA.

Employers have access to artificial intelligence language tools (“AI”) that help generate and enhance job descriptions and AI may have been used to create this description. The position description has been reviewed for accuracy and Dice believes it to correctly reflect the job opportunity.

---

• Dice Id: 10111346
• Position Id: 2600199
• Posted 7 days ago