For decades, everyone building broadband constellations was racing to put thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO). Fewer people were focused on geostationary orbit (GEO), in part because GEO was expensive, complex, and time-intensive to build for. This was a missed opportunity to serve these strategic higher orbits.
Twenty-two thousand miles up, GEO and other higher orbits serve governments and enterprises that require dedicated and resilient infrastructure for communications, monitoring, mobility, and defense applications. Historically, the industry either built shared capacity satellites for LEO - or enormous, over-engineered, spacecraft that took years to build. John Gedmark bet it could be done far faster.
John grew up in Kentucky and always had a passion for aerospace and satellites. In college, he led Purdue’s chapter of SEDS - “Students for the Exploration and Development of Space” - and met Ryan McLinko, who was running MIT’s chapter. This was back in 2006, nearly a decade before they would co-found Astranis together.
John went on to receive his Masters in Aerospace Engineering from Stanford University, and cofound and run the Commercial Spaceflight Federation; Ryan built cubesats at Planet Labs and flight control systems for Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser after interning at SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance. In 2015, Astranis was founded to build advanced spacecraft to connect, secure, and protect commercial and national security interests, starting in GEO.
Today, Astranis is the first company to mass-produce spacecraft for GEO, with five MicroGEO satellites operating on orbit and contracts spanning customers like Taiwan, Oman, NASA, and the U.S. Space Force, where Astranis is the prime contractor on multiple programs of record. The company just closed $450M in new capital, bringing total funding to more than $1.2B, and they have huge ambitions for what’s next - lead the Expansion Era of space, and build the infrastructure for every orbit beyond LEO.
The company operates out of SF’s historic Pier 70 and is hiring right now across the board. If you want to work on hardware that goes in geostationary orbit, the Astranis team would love to meet you.
Here are ten P0 roles that Astranis is hiring right now, and why they matter:
Electronics Engineering Manager - Manage a team & lead and scale Astranis’ PCBA manufacturing efforts.
Environmental Test Engineer - Help own planning and executing environmental test campaigns for components, subsystems, and spacecraft, working directly with production and engineering teams to drive hardware from design through qualification.
Senior Propulsion Manufacturing Engineer - You’ll be responsible for the production of advanced propulsion components, getting them assembled into a subsystem, and integrating that subsystem onto the vehicle.
Senior Radiation Effects Engineer - Define the environmental requirements, lead circuit-level mitigation designs, and oversee advanced testing to ensure Astranis’ electrical systems survive the harshest orbits.
Senior Harness Design Engineer - Own the design of the wire harnesses that keep the spacecraft alive on orbit, translating electrical architecture into manufacturable, flight-reliable harness designs built to survive launch and the full mission life in geostationary orbit.
Senior Product Security Engineer (Applications) - This hybrid role focuses primarily on product/application security while contributing to embedded security reviews where software and hardware intersect.
Senior Software Engineer, Hardware Test - Design the end-to-end software architecture that validates hardware at the board, subsystem, and full-vehicle level.
Senior Production Quality Engineer - Perform and support quality functions such as nonconformance resolution, first article inspection, root cause analysis, corrective actions, containments, and statistical process control.
Senior Full Stack Engineer - Enterprise Systems - Build the software systems that enable automated testing, manufacturing, and real-time control of the flight hardware and spacecraft.
Senior Motion Designer & Editor - Craft compelling films, product videos, customer stories, social media content, sales materials, and executive presentations that communicate complex technology with clarity and emotion.
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