The Satellite-Level Verification and Validation (V&V) Engineer focuses on the highest tier of spacecraft integration, ensuring the fully assembled satellite meets all mission, launch provider, and environmental requirements.
Role Overview
This role manages the end-to-end verification lifecycle at the highest tier of architecture. It starts at the beginning of the program with verification planning and test methodology design, continues through full-system functional and environmental validation, and concludes with final qualification sign-off and in-orbit initialization readiness.
Key Responsibilities & Tasks
- Verification Architecture & Matrix Ownership: Define the global verification strategy; author the System Verification Plan (SVP) and own the master Verification Control Matrix (VCM) to prove 100% requirement compliance.
- Method of Compliance (MoC) Definition: Determine the optimal, most cost-effective blend of Verification by Test, Analysis, Demonstration, and Inspection (TADI) for complex mission-level requirements.
- End-to-End Mission Validation: Design and execute full-system functional tests, "Day-in-the-Life" (DITL) mission simulations, and complex Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery (FDIR) validation scenarios.
- Environmental & Launch Qualification: Define test profiles, pass/fail criteria, and post-test correlation frameworks for full spacecraft environmental campaigns (Thermal Vacuum, Sine-Vibe, Acoustic, Shock).
- Sign-off & Qualification Review: Lead Technical Review Boards, manage non-conformance reports (NCRs), present compliance evidence at Qualification Reviews (QR), and build the final Flight Readiness data package.
Candidate Prerequisites ("Must Haves")
- Experience: 5+ years in aerospace systems engineering, systems V&V, or space mission qualification roles.
- Systems Engineering Mastery: Deep understanding of how platform subsystems and digital/RF payloads interact to satisfy top-level mission performance metrics.
- Requirements Management: Expert-level capability in tracing, decomposing, and closing out complex requirements using enterprise tools like DOORS, Jama, or Windchill.
- Data Synthesis & Analysis: Advanced skills using Python or MATLAB to parse multi-subsystem telemetry, correlate test data with analytical models, and automate post-test verification reporting.
