Director, Applications Engineering

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At CesiumAstro, we are developers and pioneers of out-of-the-box communication systems for satellites, UAVs, launch vehicles, and other space and airborne platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and cross-functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands-on, interactive, and autonomous work, CesiumAstro is the place for you. We are actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward-thinking individuals to join our team.

We are looking to add a Director, Applications Engineering to our team. In this role you will lead the customer-facing technical organization responsible for ensuring customers can successfully understand, integrate, operate, and deploy the company’s products and solutions. The Director oversees a team of Applications Engineers who serve as technical experts on the company’s products and act as a critical interface between customers, Product, Engineering, Business Development, and program execution. The Director owns the Voice of the Customer within the product organization, ensuring that customer needs, integration challenges, operational experience, and product feedback are translated into actionable product requirements, roadmap priorities, documentation, tools, and improvements. Supporting customers throughout the product lifecycle—from early product evaluation and pursuits through integration, test, deployment, and on-orbit or operational support—the Applications Engineering organization focuses on making complex communication products easy to adopt, integrate, and successfully operate.

JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Build, develop, and lead a high-performing customer-facing technical team with deep expertise in the company’s communication products, their applications, interfaces, and operation.

Establish Applications Engineering as the primary technical interface for customers integrating and deploying standard and configurable products.

Ensure customers have the technical guidance, documentation, tools, training, and support necessary to integrate, test, commission, and operate products successfully.

Capture customer needs, integration challenges, product feedback, and operational experience and translate them into actionable input for Product and Engineering.

Partner with Product leadership to identify recurring customer needs, usability gaps, integration challenges, and new applications that should influence product capabilities and investment priorities.

Ensure the Applications Engineering team maintains detailed knowledge of product hardware, software, interfaces, performance, configuration, and operational behavior through close engagement with product development teams and hands-on laboratory experience.

Partner with Communication Systems Architects, Business Development, and Product teams to apply existing and planned products to customer needs, develop product configurations, answer technical questions, and support proposals and customer demonstrations.

Establish the approach for supporting customers through integration, test, commissioning, and operation, including rapid diagnosis and resolution of customer-reported anomalies.

Own the strategy and quality of customer-facing technical content, including user manuals, application notes, integration guides, reference architectures, examples, training material, and other resources required for successful product adoption.

Identify recurring customer integration patterns and develop reference architectures, tools, procedures, and standard solutions that reduce engineering effort and make products easier to deploy across customers and missions.

Establish effective mechanisms for escalating product issues, communicating customer priorities, supporting root-cause resolution, and ensuring lessons from customer deployments improve future product releases.

Partner with Conceptual Design, Product Development & Assurance, Product Management, Engineering, Business Development, and execution teams to maintain continuity from customer need through solution development, product selection, program execution, integration, and operation.

Build a team capable of combining strong technical depth with customer engagement, systems thinking, troubleshooting, and clear technical communication.

JOB REQUIREMENTS AND MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical field with 11–15 years of related experience, Master's degree in a related field with 9–12 years of related experience, or PhD in a related field with 7–10 years of related experience in applications engineering, systems engineering, product engineering, customer integration, technical support, or a related engineering discipline.

5+ years of leadership or management experience leading applications engineering, systems engineering, product engineering, or related technical professionals and managers.

Extensive experience directing customer integration and deployment activities involving complex hardware and software systems.

Expertise in resolving significant system integration, product performance, and technical challenges through direct customer engagement and cross-functional engineering coordination.

Demonstrated experience translating customer requirements, operational feedback, and field experience into product requirements, technical documentation, application tools, and product improvement.

CesiumAstro considers several factors when extending an offer, including but not limited to, the role and associated responsibilities, a candidate’s work experience, education/training, and key skills. Full-time employment offers include company stock options and a generous benefits package including health, dental, vision, HSA, FSA, life, disability and retirement plans.

CesiumAstro is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected Veteran Status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Please note: CesiumAstro does not accept unsolicited resumes from contract agencies or search firms. Any unsolicited resumes submitted to our website or to CesiumAstro team members will be considered property of CesiumAstro, and we will not be obligated to pay any referral fees.