Senior Physical Scientist

Why LeoLabs?

At LeoLabs, we’re building the living map of activity in space. Through our proprietary global radar network and AI-enabled analytics platform, we collect millions of measurements daily on more than 25,000 objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). Our radar-powered intelligence protects billions in assets, monitors adversarial behavior, and ensures safe operations for commercial and government missions.

We’re not just building technology, we are redefining global security, safety, and transparency in space. As orbital activity accelerates and threats grow more complex, LeoLabs is a trusted partner for Space Domain Awareness, Space Traffic Management, and Satellite Operations for top-tier space operators and allied defense organizations.

If you're looking to work on mission-critical challenges at the forefront of aerospace, national security, and AI, your impact starts here.

Role Overview

LeoLabs is seeking a talented individual to join our Catalog team as a Senior Physical Scientist. This role is intentionally multi-focused: it sits at the intersection of astrodynamics, statistical estimation, and production software, and is designed for a hands-on subject matter expert who is equally comfortable developing algorithms, supporting operational systems, and shaping technical direction.

 

The Catalog team’s mission is to build and maintain the world’s most accurate independent catalog of objects in low Earth orbit using data from LeoLabs sensors and partners. Our systems operate continuously in production, integrating radar scheduling, measurement association, orbit determination and propagation, and new object discovery at scale. As a Senior Physical Scientist, you will be expected to bring deep domain expertise to these problems—owning critical components of the pipeline, diagnosing complex behaviors, and guiding improvements grounded in first principles.

 

This role is for a scientist-engineer who understands the physics and statistics behind complex data pipelines, can translate that understanding into reliable, maintainable software, and can apply it in an operational environment where correctness, robustness, and timeliness matter. You will contribute through algorithm development, operational support, and automation, while also providing technical leadership through design input, mentorship, and cross-team collaboration.

 

Key Responsibilities

Orbit Determination & Operations

• Analyze and refine physical models to improve orbit determination accuracy and precision.
• Maintain and improve the radar scheduling and measurement association systems, balancing physical fidelity, statistical robustness, and operational constraints.
• Support launch and early operations (LEOP), including time-critical troubleshooting and object cataloging.
• Interface with satellite operators and internal stakeholders to tune system performance and resolve operational issues.

Software Engineering

• Design automation for object observation, association, cataloging, and data quality monitoring to reduce manual intervention.
• Contribute to scaling systems for real-time operation on large data sets, ensuring algorithms and models remain valid as scale and complexity increase.
• Develop and maintain production scientific software in Python, translating physical and statistical models into reliable, testable code.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, containerized deployments, and automated testing.

Required Qualifications

• S. (M.S. or Ph.D. preferred) in Astrodynamics, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field.
• 3–6+ years of experience in orbit determination, numerical modeling, data analysis, or machine learning.
• Strong foundation in:
  • Linear algebra, probability, and statistics
  • Optimal estimation and statistical OD
• Significant experience with Python in production environments.
• Demonstrated ability to develop high-reliability nonlinear algorithms.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Kalman filters and nonlinear estimation techniques
• Experience with radar-based tracking, sensor fusion, or probabilistic data association.
• Familiarity with cloud-based software infrastructure (AWS), containerization (Docker), and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience supporting or operating complex, real-time scientific data pipelines.
• Experience developing or optimizing algorithms for high-performance computing environments, including parallelization, performance tuning, or large-scale numerical workloads.
• Experience incorporating machine learning or AI techniques into scientific or operational software systems.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., for code generation, testing, debugging, or performance optimization) as part of a production software workflow.
• Experience with Orbit Determination tools, especially using AGI ODTK 
• Prior experience in on-call rotations or operational support roles.

What Success Looks Like

Within 1 Month

• Complete our onboarding program designed to get you up to speed on our business, vision and team

• Set up your local development environment and become familiar with our engineering stack. 
• Participate in your first sprint, contributing to small bug fixes or feature improvements. 
• Shadow a senior engineer and orbit support analyst to understand our data pipeline and system architecture. 
• Join the orbit support team’s weekly on-call rotation

Within 3 Months

• Take ownership of a small-to-medium feature, from design to implementation. 
• Conduct your first production deployment, following our CI/CD process. 
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (e.g., Product, Infrastructure) to understand dependencies and align on priorities. Be deeply involved with the development of key features 
• Provide feedback in code reviews and contribute to team discussions on technical design decisions. 
• Define a career growth plan with your manager 

Within 6 Months

• Take a leadership role in a key technical initiative, such as automation to reduce manual workflows or new algorithm design to improve a system’s efficiency
• Build internal dashboards to monitor data quality and system performance. 
• Lead an incident response or troubleshooting effort, demonstrating a deep understanding of our system. 
• Take a production feature from start to finish on your own, including communication and coordination with stakeholders and other teams 

Within 12 Months

• Be subject matter expert in one or more parts of the data pipeline
• Consistently delivering high-impact improvements to the data pipeline
• Drive a major technical improvement, such as re-architecting a part of our pipeline for improved data quality.
• Helping shape technical direction through proposals and design input.

Perks and Benefits

• Global workforce: flexible remote/hybrid opportunities
• Work on complex, meaningful missions with real-world impact
• Unlimited paid time off for most roles
• Competitive salary and equity packages
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
• Access to the forefront of commercial space operations and defense innovation

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identify, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.