Director, Applications Engineering

Please Note: To conform with the United States Government Space Technology Export Regulations, the applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., conditional resident, asylee or refugee (protected individuals as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

At CesiumAstro, we are developers and pioneers of out-of-the-box communication systems for satellites, UAVs, launch vehicles, and other space and airborne platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and cross-functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands-on, interactive, and autonomous work, CesiumAstro is the place for you. We are actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward-thinking individuals to join our team.

JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES - Lead Applications Engineering. Build, develop, and lead a high-performing customer-facing technical team with deep expertise in the company’s communication products, their applications, interfaces, and operation.

- Own the technical product/customer interface. Establish Applications Engineering as the primary technical interface for customers integrating and deploying standard and configurable products.

- Drive successful product adoption. Ensure customers have the technical guidance, documentation, tools, training, and support necessary to integrate, test, commission, and operate products successfully.

- Own the Voice of the Customer. Capture customer needs, integration challenges, product feedback, and operational experience and translate them into actionable input for Product and Engineering.

- Influence product strategy and roadmap. Partner with Product leadership to identify recurring customer needs, usability gaps, integration challenges, and new applications that should influence product capabilities and investment priorities.

- Develop deep product expertise. Ensure the Applications Engineering team maintains detailed knowledge of product hardware, software, interfaces, performance, configuration, and operational behavior through close engagement with product development teams and hands-on laboratory experience.

- Support pursuits and customer solution development. Partner with Communication Systems Architects, Business Development, and Product teams to apply existing and planned products to customer needs, develop product configurations, answer technical questions, and support proposals and customer demonstrations.

- Lead customer integration and technical support. Establish the approach for supporting customers through integration, test, commissioning, and operation, including rapid diagnosis and resolution of customer-reported anomalies.

- Drive product documentation and enablement. Own the strategy and quality of customer-facing technical content, including user manuals, application notes, integration guides, reference architectures, examples, training material, and other resources required for successful product adoption.

- Create scalable application solutions. Identify recurring customer integration patterns and develop reference architectures, tools, procedures, and standard solutions that reduce engineering effort and make products easier to deploy across customers and missions.

- Close the loop with Engineering. Establish effective mechanisms for escalating product issues, communicating customer priorities, supporting root-cause resolution, and ensuring lessons from customer deployments improve future product releases.

- Partner across the product lifecycle. Work closely with Conceptual Design, Product Development & Assurance, Product Management, Engineering, Business Development, and execution teams to maintain continuity from customer need through solution development, product selection, program execution, integration, and operation.

- Develop applications engineering talent. Build a team capable of