Mission Manager

Job description

Wanna join the adventure? Loft Orbital's mission is to make space simple. We deploy customer missions on our satellite infrastructure so our customers can focus on their applications instead of the spacecraft underneath them. The Customer Delivery team turns signed contracts into working missions on orbit and supports our customers from start to finish. As a Mission Manager on the Customer Delivery team, you lead the delivery of customer missions from contract signature to deployment on orbit. You own the Mission Development Plan and schedule, drive the work across engineering, product, and operations teams, and keep the customer and Loft aligned on where things stand. You will work alongside our Customer Delivery Engineers (CDEs), who design and execute each customer mission, by building the development plans and capability portfolio they draw on to deliver value to our customers. You will also manage the Customer Offering Portfolio that defines what Loft can deliver and drive quality, visibility, and consistency in how new capabilities are deployed to our customer offering. This role is well suited to someone who has delivered complex technical programs to external customers and wants to own missions flying in orbit. About this role: Own the Mission Development Plan for assigned missions: identify all work required to deploy and execute the mission, break it down into committed work packages with contributing teams, and drive it to completion against launch-anchored deadlines and the customer milestones Manage the customer relationship for mission delivery: engage with customers day to day, up to the executive level, on mission scope, schedule, and capability tradeoffs Manage the Customer Offering Portfolio: maintain the catalog of capabilities Loft can draw on to execute customer missions, identify deltas between the portfolio and upcoming mission needs, and drive new capability development with product and engineering teams Partner with Customer Delivery Engineers to deliver customer value: CDEs execute the mission with the customer, and you ensure the capabilities, plans, and tooling they need are in place when they need them Connect Customer Delivery to Loft's product organization by representing operational and customer constraints in product planning, and by managing the deployment of new features and capabilities into operational use Drive cross-functional coordination and status clarity: run internal reviews with CDEs, report on development progress, risks, and blockers, and keep leadership and customers aligned on where things stand Build the tools, templates, and workflows the Customer Delivery team needs to execute efficiently - often from a blank page, with Jira and spreadsheets - and right-size them for a small, fast-moving team Must Haves: 8+ years of professional experience in technical program, product, or engineering roles 3+ years managing technical programs or missions delivered to external customers, from definition through delivery and operations Experience deploying products into production or operational environments, including release readiness, cross-team dependency management, and post-deployment quality Experience in the satellite or aerospace industry, with working knowledge of spacecraft systems, mission operations, or payload development Experience owning the relationship with external customers day to day, including scope, schedule, and tradeoff conversations with executive-level stakeholders Exceptional and proven technical aptitude: able to go deep with engineers on architecture and tradeoffs, and translate that fluently for customers and executives Excellent and concise communication skills at all levels, from engineering deep dives to executive summaries, with the organization and prioritization skills to run multiple parallel workstreams in a fast-paced environment Comfortable working with incomplete information and light process: you act with autonomy, help us make the right decisions at the right level, know when to escalate, and keep people informed Fluent written and spoken English; our customers and half the Customer Delivery team are in the US Nice to Haves: Direct experience with satellite on-orbit operations, commissioning, or ground segment software Technical leadership experience (leading engineers or technical teams, formally or informally) Experience building or managing a product/capability portfolio, roadmap, or plan of record Experience with international customers and distributed teams Some of Our Awesome Benefits: Equity, we want you to have an active role in our success Up to 35 days of Paid Time Off (vacations & RTT ) and flexible working hours, we want you to be at your best Health and life insurance, we care about your health Lunch Vouchers, because let’s be honest, we love food! (we even have a slack channel about it #loft-gourmand ) Cross-office travel opportunities between San Francisco, Colorado, and Toulouse to learn from our differences Company and team off-sites and many other events to work & celebrate together Relocation assistance to Toulouse when applicable *Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented people tend to only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Loft, we value respectful debate and people who aren’t afraid to challenge assumptions.  We strongly encourage you to apply, even if you don’t check all the boxes. Who We Are Loft: Space Made Simple.  Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable, and simple way to deploy missions in orbit. We integrate, launch, and operate spacecraft, offering end-to-end missions as a service across Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on-orbit AI, national security missions, and more. Leveraging our existing space infrastructure and an extensive inventory of satellite buses, Loft is reducing years-long integration and launch timelines to months. With more than 30 missions flown, Loft’s flight heritage and proven technologies enable customers to focus on their mission objectives. With a growing fleet on track to reach 30 satellites by 2027, we are scaling up quickly across our offices in San Francisco, CA | Golden, CO | and Toulouse, France to meet accelerating demand for space infrastructure. As an international company your resume will be reviewed by people across our offices so please attach a copy in English.