Ground Station Lead

The Position

TrustPoint is currently seeking a Full-Time Ground Station Lead at our Herndon, Virginia location to drive development and deployment of our LEONS product, and to stand up the ground station capability required to operate and scale the new positioning service which it enables.

LEONS (Low Earth Orbit Navigation System) is our ground-to-space positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) service that helps LEO satellites maintain trusted time and position when GNSS/GPS is degraded, denied, or untrusted. Conceptually, it’s the “reverse” of a GPS-like service: instead of satellites broadcasting navigation to users on the ground, a distributed network of TrustPoint-operated ground stations transmits navigation signals to satellites in orbit, enabling onboard computation of time and/or position to sustain mission performance during disruption.

This role owns the strategic and tactical management of our LEONs ground station network (including partner/vendor coordination with commercial ground providers), and is accountable for taking “new capability” from concept through operational readiness. You’ll work across engineering, product, and external partners to incorporate LEONS into TrustPoint’s architecture and ensure it works both for TrustPoint’s constellation operations and also for potential LEONS customers operating proliferated LEO systems who need resilient PNT.

As an early builder of this function, significant upward mobility will be available to the responsible individual, including opportunities to shape TrustPoint’s ground roadmap, service delivery strategy, and operational posture as we scale.

We’ll Expect You To…

• Lead end-to-end development and deployment of LEONS, including ground-to-space signal delivery readiness, operational monitoring concepts, and service rollout planning.
• Own strategy and execution for LEONs operations: architecture, coverage planning, capacity planning, redundancy, and phased expansion.
• Stand up TrustPoint’s LEONs capability from first principles: requirements, vendor selection/management, operational procedures, and performance metrics.
• Manage LEONs vendors and partners: contracting support, integration planning, SLAs, schedules, and incident coordination.
• Coordinate closely with the engineering team to incorporate LEONS into TrustPoint’s system architecture, including interface definitions, timing/orbit data flows, security/authentication constructs, and operational workflows.
• Partner with Product/Sales to translate customer needs into service requirements, define packaged offerings, and support customer integration efforts for LEONS-capable receiver/software stacks and “LEONS-ready” pathways (standalone, embedded, or TT&C-integrated).
• Drive operational readiness: establish SOPs, commissioning checklists, configuration management, on-call/incident processes, and continuous improvement loops.
• Define and track service performance (availability, geometry/coverage objectives, latency, integrity monitoring outputs, time/position quality metrics).
• Build and lead a ground function over time, including hiring/mentoring as the constellation and LEONS service scale.

You’ll Need to Have…

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field (M.S. preferred).
• 8+ years of experience in ground systems, satellite operations, TT&C networks, teleports/ground station services, or space communications infrastructure.
• Demonstrated ownership of deploying new operational capabilities (0→1), including requirements definition, vendor integration, and transition to sustained operations.
• Proven experience, including lab and field troubleshooting, bringing up complete systems: power → IP networking → timing → RF → remote monitoring.
• Strong systems thinking across space/ground interfaces, mission operations workflows, and service reliability engineering.
• Ability to operate autonomously in a fast-paced startup environment and drive complex programs to completion.
• Excellent professional and interpersonal communication skills, both verbal and written.

We’d Like to See…

• Experience supporting or deploying navigation, timing, or high-integrity services (PNT, time…