Navigation Engineer at Xona Space Systems Inc – Burlingame, California

Xona is building the next generation of satellite navigation — a high-performance, resilient alternative to GPS powered by a commercial constellation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. We are on a mission to unlock a new era of autonomy, advanced mobility, and infrastructure resilience by delivering precise, secure, and robust positioning services to the world.

We're not here to incrementally improve GNSS. We're here to redefine it from the ground up.

As a Navigation Engineer on our Navigation Software team, you'll play a crucial role in developing the brain of our satellite system. This is an exciting chance to apply your data science skills to real-world problems in space technology. You'll work with a fast-moving team to analyze complex data and build models for:

• Precise Positioning: Helping our system determine extremely accurate locations.
• Orbit Determination: Calculating and predicting the exact paths of our satellites.
• Clock Estimation: Ensuring highly precise timing across the system.
• Atmospheric Modeling: Understanding how the atmosphere affects our signals.
• Integrity Monitoring: Developing methods to ensure the safety and reliability of our data for critical applications.

You'll get to use your programming skills to develop, test, and validate these solutions. You'll also collaborate closely with our payload software team, getting hands-on experience with both test and flight hardware.

• A Master's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Geomatics Engineering, or a related quantitative field.
• 1+ years of experience applying data analysis, machine learning, or statistical modeling to problems in navigation, localization, or estimation (e.g., in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or aerospace).
• Strong programming skills in Python (for data analysis and model development) and familiarity with C++ (for implementation).
• Experience with statistical signal processing and estimation techniques, such as Kalman filters, or other state estimation methods.
• Familiarity with working with large datasets, data cleaning, and data visualization.
• An understanding of satellite systems, orbital mechanics, or orbit determination is a plus.
• Any exposure to atmospheric sciences and modeling would be a bonus.
• To comply with U.S. Government space technology export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the United States (i.e. Green Card holder), or other protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).