Director of Hardware
About the role
Full-stack VLEO satellite missions - Lead the hardware engineering organization across opto-mechanical, structures, thermal, and avionics to enable Albedo's VLEO buses and payloads; own design margins, drive build flow, and balance make-vs-buy decisions.
Responsibilities
- Lead the hardware engineering organization — opto-mechanical, structures, thermal, avionics — across approximately three to four teams of managers and ICs
- Own design margin discipline against design standards across thermal, structural, radiation, electrical, mass, and optical budgets, and make those margins routine
- Drive the AIT build flow from primary mirror unit fabrication through bus-to-payload integration through environmental test
- Set and defend make-vs-buy strategy: vertical integration where the physics is the moat, aggressive outsourcing of commodity, decisions documented and revisited
- Develop hardware engineering managers who can run their domains without requiring you in every technical decision
- Partner with the Director of Software, Systems Engineering, and program management to close the analytical loop between hardware design, flight telemetry, and the next build
- Engage directly in design reviews, anomaly investigations, and supplier technical assessments — operate in the system without becoming a bottleneck
Qualifications
- Twelve-plus years in precision spaceflight hardware
- At least four years leading hardware engineering managers
- Hands-on depth in opto-mechanical engineering, structural dynamics, or precision pointing systems
- Personally owned a precision payload or precision pointing chain end-to-end
- Track record of design margin discipline against NASA, MIL, or equivalent standards
- Demonstrated cross-disciplinary system reasoning across optics, structures, thermal, GNC, mass, and power
- Experience leading hardware through environmental test campaigns and on-orbit anomaly resolution
- Real make-vs-buy decisions you have owned and can defend with cost, schedule, and capability data
- Comfort holding a schedule under analysis-driven pressure
Skills
Benefits
- Employee friendly equity compensation
- 4% direct matching 401k
- Health Insurance: 100% employee coverage & 75% dependent coverage
- Parental leave and childcare coverage
- Flexible vacation and sick time from day one
- 12 company holidays
- $100 monthly wellness benefit
- Relocation package if not based in Denver
About Albedo
Full-stack VLEO satellite missions
Albedo builds and operates satellites in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) — a new orbital layer much closer to Earth than traditional satellites in LEO. Flying lower unlocks sharper imagery, faster communications, and real-time maneuverability with smaller, more efficient hardware. VLEO is naturally self-cleaning and resilient, offering a sustainable alternative to crowded low Earth orbit - providing diversification and redundancy for critical systems that we rely on in higher orbits. With the only flight proven VLEO system on the market, Albedo is creating a new orbital infrastructure designed for speed, precision, and resilience.
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