Ordnance Engineer

Background

Cowboy Space Corporation is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our modular, scalable satellites collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit to enable multiple integrated applications: transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and providing secure, high bandwidth optical data transport.

Current energy and data systems rely on complex logistics and outdated infrastructure. Cowboy Space Corporation overcomes these challenges by enabling direct, on-demand, secure, and scalable energy distribution and data processing from space. This will revolutionize how we operate in orbit and on Earth, supporting the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM (In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing) operations, remote regions, and military bases.

Baiju Bhatt founded Cowboy Space Corporation in 2024. Inspired by his father’s work with NASA Langley Research Center, Baiju earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford before co-founding Robinhood, now a public company that has helped over 20 million Americans access the financial system. Cowboy Space Corporation has raised ~$365 million from Index Ventures, Interlagos, Construct Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and others.

This is an ambitious mission that demands extraordinary talent. Cowboy Space Corporation’s team has worked at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis and NASA, and is based in San Carlos, CA. If you're ready to solve complex technical challenges and help build the most important energy company in the world, we want to hear from you.

About the Role

You own every energetic device on the vehicle. Pyro-valves and pyro-actuated mechanisms, and the initiators, safe-and-arm devices, and detonating trains that fire all of them. You also own the physical reality of energetics on the ground: how we buy them, store them, ship them, handle them, and who is allowed to touch them.

This is a first-hire role for the discipline. There is no ordnance group, no qualified pyro train to inherit, and no explosives site plan. Early on you are running trades, calling vendors, and writing specifications. Later you are qualifying hardware, then standing on the pad watching someone install a live initiator against a procedure you wrote and signed.

You will work alongside our Flight Safety System Architect and our Range Safety Lead. Flight Safety owns the AFTS unit, its reliability case, and the firing circuit. You own the safe-and-arm device and everything downstream of it, all non-safety-critical ordnance on the vehicle, and everything to do with energetics on the ground.

What You’ll Do

• Define the ordnance architecture for the vehicle: any pyro-actuated valve or mechanism
• Select, specify, and qualify the hardware: initiators and detonators, safe-and-arm and electronic safe-and-arm devices, through-bulkhead initiators, detonating cord and transfer lines, shaped charge, frangible joints, separation nuts, and pin pullers
• Own the energetics side of the initiation chain: no-fire and all-fire current, firing margin, function time and margin, and the inadvertent-initiation analysis on your side of the connector
• Own the environmental and susceptibility case: HERO and RF susceptibility per MIL-STD-464, ESD, bonding and grounding, thermal, vibration, and shock
• Run the qualification campaigns: component-level, subsystem-level, and full-system demonstrations, with the margin and safety-factor testing that MIL-STD-1576 requires
• Own hazard classification, net explosive weight, and the explosive site plan: quantity-distance arcs, siting, and the compatibility rules that constrain where things can live
• Stand up storage and magazine licensing, and own ATF, DOT, and DESR 6055.09 / DoD 4145.26-M compliance for buying, storing, shipping, and handling

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical, aerospace, chemical, or electrical engineering, or similar
• 5-10 years of experience in ordnance, pyrotechnics, or energetic systems on launch vehicles, missiles, or spacecraft
• Hands-on experience taking an ordnance device or an initiation train through qualification
• Working command of MIL-STD-1576 and the explosives safety regime around it: hazard classification, quantity-distance, and the DoD and ATF rules that govern energetics on the ground
• Electrical fluency sufficient to argue about the firing chain: bridgewire and exploding-foil devices, no-fire and all-fire current, firing margin, ESD and RF susceptibility, and the analysis showing inadvertent initiation cannot happen
• Real knowledge of energetic materials: what the common formulations do, how they age, what they are compatible with, and what temperature and vacuum do to them
• Excellent written communication. Your procedures will be executed by people who are not you, on hardware that only fails once
• Reusable vehicle experience: safing recovered hardware and requalifying or replacing ordnance after flight

Preferred Qualifications

• Flight termination ordnance experience specifically: thrust termination charge design, linear shaped charge on tank structure, and the qualification evidence required for range approval
• Energetic materials depth: formulation, compatibility and aging studies, or running a lot acceptance and surveillance program
• Having stood up an explosives site plan, a magazine, or an ATF license from scratch
• Pyroshock test and analysis experience, per NASA-STD-7003 or similar
• Familiarity with SSCMAN/AFSPCMAN 91-710 and the MSPSP process from the applicant's side
• Working knowledge of how these parts are actually made, and what a supplier can and cannot hold
• Experience at a startup or small hardware company where the ordnance engineer also chased the parts, the license, and the procedure
• Vandenberg and/or Cape Canaveral operating experience

Compensation and Benefits

The salary range for this position is $140,000 - $200,000 annually. The actual base salary offered will depend on factors such as job-related skills, experience, qualifications, and internal equity.

• Equity in Cowboy Space Corp.
• Employees and their eligible dependents may enroll in medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) retirement savings plan
• Paid time off
• 10 paid holidays per calendar year
• Paid parental leave
• Relocation assistance if applicable
• Daily lunch in the office and a fully stocked kitchen with beverages and snacks

ITAR Requirements

• Export Control Requirement: To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), applicants must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.