GNC Engineer - All Levels at EON in Culver City, CA

Job description

About EON EON is building the highest-throughput point-to-point data transport network ever deployed in space. Using free-space laser links in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), we move petabytes of data between any two points on Earth as an alternative to subsea or terrestrial fiber. EON recently closed a $10.75M seed financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst in their first-ever co-led space deal. EON is building out of its R&D center in Culver City. Today, approximately 95% of the global internet travels through a few hundred subsea fiber-optic cables, infrastructure designed in the early 2000s that has gone largely unchanged. Demand for new fiber has never been higher, but laying it is extraordinarily difficult: permits, ocean geology, and geopolitical boundaries make every new cable a years-long, billion-dollar undertaking. That bottleneck is a liability with cables at constant risk of being cut, whether by accident or adversarial action, and no amount of ground-based investment can fully solve it. The Role EON's platform has to point where the link needs it, when it needs it, and we have to prove that in simulation long before first light. We are seeking GNC engineers across the pointing chain: platform pointing, acquisition, and the modeling environment that proves the whole chain out. If you run deep in one concentration below we'll put you where your depth matters most, and if you move across GNC you'll help tie the platform-pointing and simulation work together. Concentrations 1. Pointing, Acquisition, and Tracking (PAT) You own the platform side of acquisition: the strategy and sequence that finds the other terminal, from open-loop pointing off ephemeris through scan-and-stare search, detection, and coarse track, up to handoff to the Lasercom PAT loop for fine steering and beam lock. You define the acquisition timeline and probability budget and prove both in simulation before flight. You may excel here if you've designed acquisition sequences or closed-loop coarse tracking for line-of-sight systems (lasercom, optical crosslinks, seekers, or similar) and can defend an acquisition probability budget. 2. Flight Dynamics & Navigation You own where the platform points and how it gets there: orbit and ephemeris, the body-pointing error budget, and the pointing solution the acquisition sequence runs on. You consume the bus attitude solution and layer the pointing and geometry on top, feeding the PAT concentration's acquisition sequence. You may excel here if you've done orbit/ephemeris, pointing-geometry, and attitude work and can own a body-pointing error budget. 3. Simulation & Performance You own the simulation environment the rest of the pointing team designs and validates against: 6-DOF platform dynamics, orbit and relative geometry, sensor and actuator models, the atmospheric channel, the Monte Carlo campaigns that show the link closes across the envelope, and the hardware-in-the-loop path as components arrive. You may excel here if you've built 6-DOF or Monte Carlo simulation frameworks that other engineers design and validate against. Not sure, or a strong generalist? If you move across GNC rather than living in one discipline, that's a seat too. You'll help tie platform pointing and the modeling environment together and grow into the concentration that fits you best. Responsibilities • Own a distinct piece of the pointing chain, from orbit and attitude through acquisition handoff, and carry it from concept through first light • Build and defend the body-pointing and acquisition error budgets against the system-level link budget • Model, simulate, and analyze platform dynamics, geometry, and pointing performance, and validate models against hardware as it arrives • Define interfaces with the bus vendor, the Lasercom PAT loop, and the optical seats, driving trade-offs where pointing and optical performance are tightly coupled • Identify the highest-risk assumptions in the pointing chain early and retire