Satellite Operator

Job description

Team & Reporting Line: Flight Operations/Satellite Operations

Our Mission 

At constellr, we use thermal intelligence from space to understand what is happening on Earth - where, when and at scale. Our satellite constellation delivers high-resolution land surface temperature data, giving governments, defence organisations, commercial operators and global institutions the intelligence they need to monitor change, assess risk and make better-informed decisions.

From national security and critical infrastructure to agriculture and climate resilience, constellr turns temperature into actionable intelligence for a changing world.

Your Role

As a Satellite Operator, you sit at the console where our constellation meets the ground. You will be part of the Satellite Operations team, working a shift rotation alongside a small, senior group of operators and reporting to the Flight Operations Team Lead, with a Flight Director on call for every critical decision. Day to day you will fly the spacecraft: monitoring routine passes, executing special requests from internal stakeholders, reacting to off-nominal behaviour with disciplined procedure execution, and driving anomalies through to closure.

You will work shoulder to shoulder with Mission Control, Mission Planning, Flight Dynamics, Ground Segment and the platform and payload engineering teams, which makes this one of the best seats in the company for understanding how the whole mission fits together. Every procedure you author, every automation script you contribute and every anomaly you close makes the fleet safer and increases the volume and quality of thermal data we deliver to customers who depend on it for climate resilience, food security and national security decisions.

Key responsibilities

• Fly the constellation on a shift rota: pass preparation, telemetry monitoring, commanding, command schedule uplink, payload downlink verification and end-of-shift handover reports. 

• Execute non-routine and special tasking per applicable flight procedures: priority tasking, calibration and characterization campaigns, payload reconfiguration, onboard software and table uploads, collision avoidance and orbit maintenance.  

• Act as first responder to off-nominal events and alarms: diagnose using contingency procedures, place the spacecraft in a safe configuration, and log the event with supporting evidence in the anomaly management system.  

• Drive anomalies to closure with platform, payload and ground segment engineering: track corrective actions, prepare and validate recovery activities, and verify the fix on orbit.