Radiation Test Engineer
Houston, TX
About Intuitive Machines:
Intuitive Machines is an innovative and cutting-edge space company making cislunar space accessible to both public and private customers. Our mission is to further science and exploration, communications, and economic progress from the Earth to the Moon and beyond. With multiple NASA lunar missions in development and additional private missions on our manifest, we pride ourselves in supporting NASA, our customers, and the nation in paving the way to return humans to the surface of the Moon. Our world-class team includes experts in all aspects of spacecraft subsystems design, development, and test, on-orbit operations, and safety.
About the Position:
We are seeking a radiation test engineer for the Intuitive Machines NOVA-C / NOVA-D Lunar Lander and Altus Lunar Satellite programs. The role will serve as the technical authority for defining mission-based radiation environments, providing hardware design implementations to handle those environments, establishing test programs to evaluate the hardware solutions, coordinating with test facilities to execute these test programs, and analyzing the test results to quantify the hardware solutions' ability to meet the mission objectives in the environments.
Your work will have a direct impact on program success, supporting spacecraft builds, payload integration, mission rehearsals, and full end-to-end system tests. This is a hands on, high ownership role at the center of spacecraft and payload integration. Reports to Avionics Director.
Responsibilities:
- Define radiation environments per mission,
- Define tests based on those environments, including these support tasks"
- Create functional block & harness diagrams for the tests
- Design test cables
- Design (Altium) test PCBs
- Perform cross section / probabilistic analyses on test results.
- Develop test plans and test procedures for payload and spacecraft system testing
- Track risks, integration issues, and system limitations; drive mitigation strategies
- Manage configuration changes as flight hardware and payloads evolve over the program lifecycle
- Ensure safe operations, access control, and hardware handling discipline
- Define program requirements based on radiation environment.
- Help standing up Radiation hardness program for IM. We are starting to come up on 5years of our initial testing and we are still banking on parts being the same. There are industry techniques to help mitigate this w/o having to retest every single part.
- Be familiar with Radiation mitigation strategies in hardware or firmware, in an effort to mitigate / redirect usage for hardware that may have initially failed testing.
- General SME consulting about radiation, parts selection, etc. Become familiar with our missions, devices, vehicle architecture, etc. to provide guidance internally to the design and development engineers.
- Own test campaigns from start to finish, coordinating with engineers for designing test bench's, documenting dry runs, and test logistics. IM test conductor for all radiation tests, making real time decisions during irradiation. Follow up on test reports, implications from test data, and proper design mitigations.
- Negotiates contracts for beam time for Proton and Heavey Ion test facilities.
- Performs radiation analysis and supports engineering with recommended mitigation tactics.
- Conducts experiments to evaluate total ionizing dose (TID), displacement damage dose (DDD), single-event effects (SEE), and dose rate effects on microelectronics and semiconductor devices.
- Works with outside customers to define mission radiation requirements.
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or Physics, or related field with applicable experience.
- 5+ years relevant experience (3+ with MS)
- Handson experience with spacecraft subsystems, avionics, or hardware-in-the-loop(HWIL) testbeds
- Ability to interpret electrical schematics, system diagrams, and interface definitions
- Experience with test planning and test procedure development
- Strong understanding of spacecraft power systems, communications, C&DH, and ground interfaces
- Ability to work effectively in fast paced, evolving technical environments
- U.S. citizenship
Preferred Requirements:
- Scripting experience (Labview, python, JavaScript, VBA).
- Experience designing or operating Flatsat, HWIL, or spacecraft system testbed
- Background in high reliability or mission critical systems
- Experience supporting environmental tests or mission readiness/rehearsals
US EEO Statement:
Intuitive Machines is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.
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