About the Guild

Founded in 2022, Ethereal Exploration Guild (The Guild) is building the World’s First Fully Reusable Medium-Lift Launch Vehicle/Rocket, Razor Crest Mk-1(RCM1).

Based in India, the team has a combined flight heritage of over 75 launches from the PSLV and GSLV fleets, and more than 300 years of collective experience in the space industry. The Guild is also developing a 700,000 sq ft facility dedicated to Upper Stage Engine Testing, which is going to be India’s largest privately developed Engine Testing Facility.

The Guild has also built and manufactured India’s First Reusable Rocket Engine.

We are looking for a self-motivated individual to join the Hands of the Guild as a Trajectory Engineer .

Please apply to the job using the link provided below:

https://zfrmz.in/KfKerXDmlH0xjq1ziRZn

Location: Hebbal, Bengaluru

Job-Type: On-site, Monday - Saturday

Role Summary: We are seeking a Senior Trajectory Engineer to lead mission analysis, trajectory design, optimization, and flight-performance assessment for a fully reusable launch vehicle. The engineer will develop end-to-end mission designs covering ascent, stage separation, orbital insertion, booster return, upper-stage recovery, re-entry, and precision landing.

This role requires solid expertise in astrodynamics, flight mechanics, numerical optimization, and multidisciplinary launch-vehicle analysis. The successful candidate will work closely with Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC), propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, thermal, avionics, flight software, range safety, and operations teams to convert mission objectives into feasible, robust, and flight-ready trajectories.

Core Responsibilities:

Mission and trajectory design

- Design end-to-end trajectories for orbital and suborbital missions using a fully or partially reusable launch vehicle.
- Develop ascent trajectories from lift-off through stage separation and orbital insertion.
- Design booster recovery trajectories, including boost-back, coast, atmospheric entry, aerodynamic descent, landing burn and touchdown.
- Develop upper-stage disposal, deorbit, re-entry and recovery trajectories where applicable.
- Design direct-injection, parking-orbit, multi-burn and multi-payload deployment missions.
- Determine launch azimuth, launch window, injection conditions, orbital elements and payload-separation conditions.
- Perform launch-site, landing-site and downrange recovery-site feasibility studies.
- Evaluate return-to-launch-site, downrange landing and expendable mission options.

Trajectory optimization
- Formulate and solve constrained optimal-control problems for ascent, orbit insertion and vehicle recovery.
- Optimize payload capability, propellant consumption, mission duration, thermal exposure, structural loading and landing reserves.
- Develop single-phase and multiphase trajectory-optimization frameworks.
- Define appropriate states, controls, path constraints, boundary conditions, events and phase-linkage conditions.
- Support optimization using direct and indirect methods, nonlinear programming, collocation, shooting and evolutionary algorithms.
- Perform coupled trade studies involving staging, engine operation, throttling, aerodynamic guidance and recovery strategy.

Vehicle performance and feasibility assessment
- Establish vehicle-level performance models using propulsion, aerodynamic,



mass-property and atmospheric data.
- Generate payload-performance maps for different inclinations, altitudes, launch sites and recovery modes.
- Evaluate staging conditions, propellant margins, engine-out capability and reserve requirements.
- Quantify the performance impact of reusable hardware, recovery propellant and landing systems.
- Support vehicle-sizing and architecture trades during preliminary and detailed design.
- Identify performance bottlenecks and recommend design changes.

Guidance and GNC integration
- Translate optimized reference trajectories into implementable guidance profiles and onboard mission parameters.
- Define mission phases, segments, modes, events, guidance transitions and abort triggers.
- Establish trajectory interfaces with ascent guidance, entry guidance, landing guidance and flight-control systems.
- Provide reference histories for attitude, flight-path angle, angle of attack, bank angle, dynamic pressure, acceleration, heating, thrust and engine gimbal commands.
- Define guidance targets for staging, orbital injection, boost-back, entry, landing-burn initiation and touchdown.
- Support development and validation of predictor-corrector/ powered explicit guidance and other onboard guidance algorithms.
- Assess trajectory feasibility under actuator, navigation, propulsion and flight-control limitations.

Dispersion, robustness and Monte Carlo analysis
- Define mission-level uncertainty models covering atmosphere, winds, aerodynamics, propulsion, mass properties, navigation errors, actuator behavior and initial conditions.
- Conduct Monte Carlo simulations to assess orbital-injection accuracy, recovery performance and constraint compliance.
- Develop launch-day trajectory-update and wind-biasing methodologies.
- Evaluate robustness to engine failures, delayed events, off-nominal staging, navigation errors and degraded actuator performance.
- Establish propellant, performance and targeting margins.
- Support verification of mission success probability and flight-safety requirements.

Flight safety and mission operations
- Support range-safety analysis, instantaneous impact point prediction and hazard-area definition.
- Generate nominal and dispersed ground tracks, stage-drop zones and debris footprints.
- Support flight-termination-system analyses.
- Develop launch-window, collision-avoidance and orbital-insertion targeting products.
- Provide mission-design inputs for launch commit criteria and operational procedures.
- Support real-time mission monitoring, pre-flight targeting and post-flight trajectory reconstruction.

Verification, validation and flight qualification
- Define verification requirements and acceptance criteria for mission-design and trajectory-analysis software.
- Correlate independent simulation tools and investigate discrepancies.
- Conduct model-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop assessments.
- Support design reviews, including SRR, PDR, CDR,



TRR and flight-readiness reviews.
- Prepare trajectory data books, mission-analysis reports, performance summaries and verification evidence.
- Support pre-flight predictions and post-flight reconstruction using telemetry and tracking data.
- Compare reconstructed flight performance against nominal predictions and update models accordingly.

Technical leadership
- Lead mission-design activities across multiple programs and flight configurations.
- Review trajectory models, optimization formulations, simulation results and engineering reports.
- Establish modelling standards, coordinate systems, sign conventions, units and interface definitions.
- Mentor junior engineers in astrodynamics, trajectory optimization and launch-vehicle flight mechanics.
- Coordinate technical work across GNC, propulsion, aerodynamics, structures, thermal and operations teams.
- Identify technical risks and drive them to resolution through analysis, testing and design changes.
- Contribute to roadmap planning for mission-design tools and reusable-flight capabilities.

Required Qualifications:

- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Physics or a related discipline.
- 3-6 years of relevant experience in mission design, trajectory optimization, launch-vehicle performance, astrodynamics or GNC analysis.
- Strong understanding of launch-vehicle ascent, staging, orbital insertion, atmospheric flight and powered landing.
- Demonstrated experience developing 3-degree-of-freedom trajectory simulations.
- Strong knowledge of orbital mechanics, flight mechanics, coordinate systems and reference-frame transformations.
- Experience formulating and solving constrained nonlinear optimization problems.
- Proficiency in Python, MATLAB/Simulink, C++ or an equivalent scientific-computing environment.
- Experience conducting sensitivity, dispersion and Monte Carlo analyses.
- Ability to interpret propulsion, aerodynamic, mass-property and environmental databases.
- Experience with configuration control, technical documentation and engineering review processes.
- Strong analytical, communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

- MTech/MS/PhD with specialization in astrodynamics, optimal control, flight mechanics or GNC.
- Direct experience with reusable boosters, lifting re-entry vehicles, upper-stage recovery or vertical landing.
- Experience with multiphase optimal-control software such as GPOPS-II, DIDO, CasADi, OpenMDAO/ Dymos, OTIS, POST2 or equivalent in-house tools.
- Experience developing six-degree-of-freedom simulations or integrating trajectory products with 6-DOF GNC models.
- Knowledge of atmospheric entry, aerothermal constraints and bank-angle guidance.
- Experience with powered-descent guidance, landing-burn targeting or successive convexification.
- Familiarity with onboard guidance algorithms and flight-software implementation constraints.
- Experience with launch-range safety, debris analysis, NOTAM inputs or ground-risk assessment.
- Familiarity with navigation sensors, inertial navigation, GNSS and state-estimation performance.
- Experience supporting launch operations, flight qualification or post-flight reconstruction.
- Working knowledge of Linux, Git, automated testing and continuous-integration workflows.

📌 Senior Trajectory Engineer (Bangalore Metropolitan Area)
🏢 Ethereal Exploration Guild
📍 Bangalore Metropolitan Area