Flight Safety Analyst - Axient, LLC

Axient is seeking a highly motivated individual experienced in Flight Safety Analysis to join our team onsite at Wallops Island Virginia. 

The position is in the Safety & Mission Assurance Office at Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) within the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). You will serve as a flight safety analyst for suborbital and orbital aerospace flight vehicles and Balloons, with a primary focus on Sub-Orbital launch vehicles. The work involves coordinating, monitoring, maintaining, and using technological processes in support of safety analysis for aerospace and aeronautical programs from definition to launch, and operations.

Axient is the prime contractor for the Safety and Mission Services (SMAS II) contract at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), with locations in Greenbelt MD and Wallops Island VA.  Axient provides full life cycle hardware and software quality oversight, reliability and risk assessments, system safety design and operational support and related services to NASA’s science and exploration missions and ground support elements, including the Roman Space Telescope (RST), and Dragonfly (Titan moon) probe.  Axient also provides flight safety analysis and operational surveillance support for NASA/Wallops orbital and suborbital rockets, balloons, and other aerial projects.

Specific responsibilities include:

Duties are described below.

• Identifies flight hazards and controls to mitigate flight hazards in aerospace or aeronautical vehicle tests or operations.
• Performs risk studies and prepares risk analysis and flight safety plans which define the safety limits, risk factors, and mission rules for missions/projects/programs.
• Analyzes mission objectives to assure compliance with Agency and GSFC/WFF Range Flight Safety criteria and advises range users on risk factors as they pertain to the mission.
• Adapts analysis methods and approaches to meet the unique requirements of assignments.
• Works with senior analysts to conduct conceptual definition studies and complex detailed analysis to establish preliminary designs and alternatives for a variety of advanced systems on proposed new projects for which no precedents are available.
• Performs theoretical, aerodynamic studies to evaluate various factors (performance, stability, trajectory, etc.) that affect flight safety. Performs casualty expectation and protected area impact probability studies.
• Calculates flight safety limits for Orbital guided launch vehicles. Analyzes post-flight data to confirm or deduce violations of limits or variations in predicted performance.
• Performs Failure Modes and Effects Analysis and Fault Trees.
• Integrates various study and analysis results into comprehensive technical briefings and reports to review panels and senior management to ensure that the risks for the mission are understood.

Provides technical advice in flight systems safety both within and outside the organization. Serves as a member of internal and external working groups, review panels, and failure investigation boards as required.

Skills: Describe the type and level of skills required to handle the Job's Responsibilities

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering with at-least 5 years’ experience in Sub-Orbital and Orbital vehicle risk analysis.
• Excellent Oral communication and technical writing skills are required.
• Experience developing software code and programs.
• Experience with Trajectory Analysis Optimization software (TAOS) and MATLAB.
• Experience with Range Safety Risk Analysis Tools such as RRAT, JARSS, and various other software tools used to perform flight risk analysis.
• Good mathematics skills.
• Travel may be required.
• Must be a U.S. citizen, able to obtain a security clearance.
• Seeking someone with good software coding experience. Candidate must have excellent communication and technical writing skills.

 Physical Requirements-

• Sitting, standing, walking, reaching, kneeling. Some light physical work may be required.