The Office of Commercial Space Transportation has a dual-purpose mission focused on ensuring safety and fostering the growth of the commercial space transportation industry. It achieves this by licensing and regulating commercial space launches and reentries, as well as the operations of launch and reentry sites. Additionally, the office develops public safety standards and requirements to keep pace with the commercial space transportation industry and emerging technologies.
Core Duties and Responsibilities Safety Analysis & Evaluations: Conduct technical reviews and safety evaluations for commercial space transportation activities, focusing on public safety, system/component reliability, and organizational safety procedures. Regulatory & Licensing Support: Review contractor work, technical documents, and applications for licenses, permits, or safety approvals.
Assist in developing regulatory requirements for new and existing commercial space technologies. Field Inspections & Compliance: Support safety inspections of commercial launch, reentry, and site operations to ensure compliance with safety, environmental, and regulatory requirements. Data & Technical Reporting: Collect and analyze operational data, perform trend analyses, conduct engineering testing, and author comprehensive technical and management reports.
Stakeholder Coordination: Assist with the initial interface for government and industry stakeholders, as well as new commercial space transportation applicants requiring licensing.
Key Areas of Expertise Sought Candidates should possess background experience or transferable skills in one or more of the following areas: Project Management & Systems Integration: Experience managing or participating in complex, multi-phase space engineering projects through certification, approval, or compliance. Background in systems engineering and integration, ensuring different technical disciplines (software, hardware, safety) align within a single project.
Physics-Based Flight Safety & Hazard Analysis: Experience performing advanced calculations, trajectory modeling, orbital mechanics, aerodynamics, or ballistics. Background or familiarity with Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), system safety engineering (e.g., MIL-STD-882), software reliability, explosives/blast effects, structural dynamics, or toxic hazard modeling.
Operational Monitoring & Field Inspections: Hands-on operational experience in flight testing, mission control, military flight operations, or aerospace manufacturing floors. Experience with quality assurance, field inspections, compliance monitoring, or conducting/participating in mishap, accident, and anomaly investigations.
This position has a positive education requirement: Applicants must submit a copy of their college or university transcripts(s) and certificates by the closing date of announcement to verify qualifications. If selected, an official transcript will be required prior to appointment. You may upload these documents with your application in USAJOBS or fax it to fax number provided in the announcement (please include announcement number on each page).
Failure to do so will result in loss of consideration. Schools must be accredited by an accrediting institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Accreditation may be verified at the following website: www.ed.gov/accreditation. Foreign education must be evaluated by a private professional organization specializing in interpretation of foreign education credentials or an accredited U.S.
educational institution in terms of equivalence to a degree acquired at an American college or university. A copy of the evaluation results must be included, otherwise your foreign education will not be considered. Basic Requirements: Degree: Engineering.
To be acceptable, the program must: (1) lead to a bachelor's degree in a school of engineering with at least one program accredited by ABET; or (2) include differential and integral calculus and courses (more advanced than first-year physics and chemistry) in five of the following seven areas of engineering science or physics: (a) statics, dynamics; (b) strength of materials (stress-strain relationships); (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics; (d) thermodynamics; (e) electrical fields and circuits; (f) nature and properties of materials (relating particle and aggregate structure to properties); and (g) any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optics, heat transfer, soil mechanics, or electronics.
OR B. Combination of education and experience -- college-level education, training, and/or technical experience that furnished (1) a thorough knowledge of the physical and mathematical sciences underlying engineering, and (2) a good understanding, both theoretical and practical, of the engineering sciences and techniques and their applications to one of the branches of engineering. The adequacy of such background must be demonstrated by one of the following: 1.
Professional registration or licensure -- Current registration as an Engineer Intern (El), Engineer in Training (EIT) or licensure as a Professional Engineer (PE) by any State, the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico.
Absent other means of qualifying under this standard, those applicants who achieved such registration by means other than written test (e.g., State grandfather or eminence provisions) are eligible only for positions that are within or closely related to the specialty field of their registration.
For example, an applicant who attains registration through a State Board's eminence provision as a manufacturing engineer typically would be rated eligible only for manufacturing engineering positions. 2. Written Test -- Evidence of having successfully passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) 2examination or any other written test required for professional registration by an engineering licensure board in the various States, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
3. Specified academic courses -- Successful completion of at least 60 semester hours of courses in the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences and that included the courses specified in the basic requirements under paragraph A. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program as described in paragraph A. 4.
Related curriculum -- Successful completion of a curriculum leading to a bachelor's degree in an appropriate scientific field, e.g., engineering technology, physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology, may be accepted in lieu of a bachelor's degree in engineering, provided the applicant has had at least 1 year of professional engineering experience acquired under professional engineering supervision and guidance.
Ordinarily there should be either an established plan of intensive training to develop professional engineering competence, or several years of prior professional engineering-type experience, e.g., in interdisciplinary positions.
(The above examples of related curricula are not all-inclusive.) Note: An applicant who meets the basic requirements as specified in A or B above, except as noted under B.1., may qualify for positions in any branch of engineering unless selective factors indicate otherwise.
Amber.Newkirk@faa.gov · 1 (202) 267-6268
This position is with Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation.
The posted pay range is $53528 – $99683/yr.
This position is eligible for telework.
This position requires a Secret security clearance.
Applications close on 2026-12-04.
This position is open under the 'Public' hiring path.
Source: USAJOBS.gov — U.S. Federal Government · Retrieved 2026-11-05 · Not affiliated with or endorsed by OPM or USAJOBS.gov
Apply on official site →