Role: Flight Dynamics - Intern/Engineer
Location: Bangalore/Ahmedabad
Experience: 0-2 years - we are open to hire interns as well as full time employees, depending on your experience (please note, that our internship program requires six months of on-site availability. Please apply only if you can commit to this duration).
About the Role:
We are seeking a Flight Dynamics Engineer to take end-to-end ownership of orbit determination and downstream flight dynamics activities for a SAR satellite constellation. You will be responsible for ensuring that the spacecraft's orbit knowledge meets the needs of the spacecraft's mission and production of SAR data products.
Responsibilities:
Flight Dynamics & Orbit Determination
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Own orbit determination using onboard GNSS and/or ground-based processing.
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Evaluate current orbit state, propagate orbits, and assess post-manoeuvre orbit changes.
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Support manoeuvre planning, execution assessment, and post-burn analysis.
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Maintain orbit knowledge quality and performance metrics across the mission lifetime.
SAR Payload Support
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Work closely with Payload and Mission teams to ensure attitude and orbit knowledge meets SAR and InSAR product requirements.
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Support persistent orbit control, repeatability, and accuracy considerations relevant to SAR imaging geometry.
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Translate orbit and attitude errors into mission-level and data-quality impacts.
Operations & Commissioning Interface
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Act as the technical authority for flight dynamics during:
- LEOP,
- commissioning,
- anomaly investigations.
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Work closely with the Mission Operations team, defining:
- what is safe and permissible,
- mode usage constraints,
- manoeuvre and pointing rules.
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Support anomaly diagnosis and recovery related to orbit behaviour.
Required Qualifications
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Bachelor's, Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering or a closely related field.
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Spaceflight experience is not mandatory, but experience in one or more of the following will enhance your application:
- satellite missions,
- CubeSat or research spacecraft programs,
- space agency or commercial mission support,
- internship/project/thesis work tied to spacecraft or flight experiments.
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Strong fundamentals in:
- orbit mechanics and propagation,
- state estimation (e.g. filtering, residual analysis).
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Ability and willingness to own operational outcomes, not just theoretical modelling or analysis.
Desired Qualifications (Nice to Have, Not Required)
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Hands-on use of mission analysis or dynamics tools (e.g. MATLAB, Python, STK, GMAT, Orekit, custom pipelines).
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Experience with GNSS-based orbit determination or precise orbit knowledge.
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Familiarity with SAR or EO missions, or an understanding of how dynamics errors affect data products.
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Exposure to propulsion system interactions with orbit determination and control.
Soft Skills & Attitude
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Comfortable operating at the boundary between theory and hardware reality.
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Willing to make decisions under uncertainty and schedule pressure.
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Clear communicator who can explain complex dynamics to non-specialists.
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Curious, adaptable, and motivated to build capability from first principles.
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Interested in growing the function over time - not just executing a narrow task.
