Solutions Architect
Kepler Communications
Key Responsibilities:
- Support customer meetings and provide architectural guidance and technical recommendations to promote the Kepler offering
- Create and deliver customer-facing presentations and white papers to shape future opportunities including technical risk identification, mitigation strategies, and recommendations for novel mission concepts
- Develop feasibility assessments and back-of-the-envelope analyses to rapidly evaluate new mission concepts and customer requests including perform high-level systems analysis, ConOps simulations and spacecraft accommodations
- Own customer mission architecture trades across RF, optical, networking, link budgets, payload accommodations, spacecraft hardware/software interfaces, and ground systems, work hands-on with modeling tools (STK, MATLAB/Python, RF tools, optical link analysis) to quantify performance and validate concepts
- Serve as the technical integrator between customer needs and internal engineering capabilities, ensuring solutions are technically executable and align with product roadmap
- Support early-phase system engineering activities, including requirements decomposition, interface definition, and preliminary architecture baselining
- Lead technical writing of proposals, responses to RFPs/RFIs, and other customer inquiries, translating ambiguous customer technical requests into actionable engineering problem statements and solution pathways
- Conduct black-hat reviews of competitors to guide capture strategy; stay abreast of industry trends and disruptors
Required Skills & Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in STEM or related field
- 5+ years of experience in satellite communications, preferably including experience in optical communications
- Strong proficiency in spacecraft system level analysis and requirements development
- Hands-on experience in multiple domains (e.g., RF systems, optical comms, spacecraft avionics, networking, mission design, or ground segment architecture)
- Strong modeling and simulation skills
- Previous responsibility for writing customer-facing technical communications, preferably in aerospace technical sales
- Experience with requirements development, CONOPS definition, and end-to-end system architecture
- Comfort debating technical trade-offs with engineering teams and defending recommendations with data
- Familiarity with commercial and government aerospace procurement and proposal processes
- Strong oral and written communication skills
Bonus Points:
- Master's degree in a STEM field
- Experience in the New Space industry
- Experience supporting early mission proposals, spacecraft concept studies, and technology maturation plans
- Experience working cross-functionally with both hardware and software engineering teams
- Ability to build quick-turn technical models to assess concepts in hours/days, not weeks
