Product Manager, Mission Planning

Job description

PRODUCT MANAGER, MISSION PLANNING We’re looking for a technically minded Product Manager to join our growing team and lead the evolution of Quindar’s Mission Planning capabilities across our Plan and Portal products. Quindar provides a unified platform to automate and accelerate mission operations. Our customers operate constellations with different missions, architectures, operational constraints, and levels of autonomy. Mission Planning sits at the intersection of those needs: helping operators understand what needs to happen, when it can happen, what constraints apply, and how plans ultimately become operational activities. In this role, you’ll own how missions translate operational objectives into executable plans, from scheduling spacecraft activities and ground contacts to coordinating requests between mission teams, payload operators, and other stakeholders. You’ll help make increasingly complex mission operations easier to plan, coordinate, and automate as our customers scale from individual spacecraft to large, diverse fleets. You’ll own key parts of the product lifecycle — from discovery and prioritization to launch and iteration — working closely with engineering, design, customer-facing teams, and other Product Managers. You should be comfortable diving into scheduling logic, operational constraints, mission workflows, and system architecture while keeping user empathy and product clarity at the center of your decisions. Key Responsibilities - Strategy & Vision: Own the roadmap and long-term vision for Mission Planning across Quindar’s Plan and Portal products. Define product requirements, user stories, success metrics, and priorities that align customer needs with Quindar’s broader mission operations strategy. - Execution: Collaborate closely with engineering and design to turn operational problems into intuitive, scalable product capabilities. Participate in technical and architecture discussions and make thoughtful tradeoffs between immediate customer needs, usability, and long-term product health. - User Understanding: Develop deep empathy for mission operators, payload operators, mission planners, and other users by conducting research, shadowing workflows, analyzing operational data, and synthesizing feedback from customer-facing teams. - Automation & Scale: Identify opportunities to move customers from manual planning and coordination toward increasingly automated and constraint-aware workflows. Ensure planning capabilities can scale from individual spacecraft to large fleets and increasingly complex mission architectures. - Planning & Scheduling: Evolve how operators plan spacecraft activities, ground contacts, payload operations, and other mission activities. Develop capabilities that account for operational constraints, resource availability, dependencies, priorities, and changing mission conditions. - Multi-Party Mission Operations: Define workflows that enable mission operators, payload operators, customers, and other stakeholders to coordinate effectively while maintaining appropriate operational boundaries and permissions. Make it easy for users to request activities, understand their status, and maintain situational awareness without requiring direct control of the spacecraft. - Metrics & Iteration: Define and track measures of planning effectiveness, including planning time, scheduling success, operator intervention, request turnaround, utilization, and adoption of automated workflows. Use data and customer feedback to continuously improve the product. - Leadership: Serve as the go-to expert on mission planning workflows, scheduling, payload operations, and the relevant competitive landscape. Develop a strong point of view on how mission planning should evolve as satellite operations become more distributed and autonomous. - Collaboration: Drive alignment across engineering, product management, design, customer success, program teams, and leadership. Clearly communicate priorities, dependencies, and tradeoffs across technical and non-technical stakeholders. What Makes This Role Unique - You’ll shape how complex spacecraft operations move from mission objectives to executable plans. - You’ll design workflows for an increasingly diverse set of operators — from teams directly commanding spacecraft to payload customers who need awareness and access without owning the spacecraft bus. - You’ll tackle planning problems involving real operational constraints, limited resources, competing priorities, and dynamic mission conditions. - You’ll help customers transition from manual scheduling and coordination toward increasingly automated mission planning. Required Qualifications - 3+ years of product management experience, preferably in aerospace, schedule optimization, autonomous vehicle operations, or complex technical SaaS products. - Proven ability to own product roadmaps and deliver complex features end-to-end. - Ability to obtain a U.S. Security Clearance required. - Demonstrated ability to understand complex user workflows and translate them into intuitive product experiences. - Excellent written and verbal communication, cross-functional leadership, and prioritization skills. - Bachelor’s degree in geospatial, computer science, aerospace, business, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience). - Ability to excel in a fast-paced, evolving environment with high ownership. Preferred Qualifications - Experience with satellite mission planning, spacecraft operations, ground segment systems, or aerospace scheduling. - Experience designing products for multiple user personas with different roles, permissions, and levels of operational authority. - Active U.S. Security Clearance (Secret or higher) preferred ITAR REQUIREMENTS - To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/ddtc_public/ddtc_public?id=ddtc_kb_article_page&sys_id=24d528fddbfc930044f9ff621f961987. Why you'll love working at Quindar - We work in a cutting edge industry and you will get the opportunity to be part of a small team with a large direct impact on the success of our customers’ space missions! - We take work life balance very seriously. We require employees to take 15 days off but provide unlimited PTO and follow most US federal government holidays. - Mental health is just as important as physical so we provide quarterly health & wellness benefits. - Comprehensive health insurance for you and your family with 100% coverage for employees. - We encourage employees to save for retirement and provide 4% 401(k) matching. - Each year we have a 4-day company offsite. Previous locations include San Francisco, Nashville, Denver, Santa Fe, New Orleans, San Diego, Bozeman, and New York City. - Our culture and company is evolving. You will be key in creating the next major or minor version!