Manager, Commercial & Civil Launch Services

ABOUT Firefly Aerospace is a space and defense technology company on a mission to reliably and repeatedly launch, land, and operate space systems from Earth to the Moon and beyond. As the partner of choice for critical space missions, Firefly is the?first?commercial company to launch a satellite to orbit with 24-hour notice and the?first?company to achieve a successful Moon landing. Headquartered in north Austin, Texas, Firefly is looking for passionate, hardworking innovators to join our team and help fuel our successful trajectory into space. SUMMARY: Firefly Aerospace is seeking a self-motivated, technically fluent business-development professional to support commercial and U.S. civil launch services for the Alpha launch vehicle. Reporting directly to the Director, Global Launch Services, this individual will serve as an initial point of coordination for prospective customers and help advance opportunities from first inquiry through qualification, mission scoping, early technical coordination, and readiness for senior business engagement. The ideal candidate combines aerospace technical knowledge, customer-facing experience, capture discipline, sound business judgment, and the ability to turn incomplete or ambiguous customer inquiries into organized, actionable opportunity briefs. This role operates independently under broad direction while partnering across Firefly to maintain continuity through capture, contracting, and transition into mission execution. JOB LOCATION?–?Remote, U.S.-based; preference for Austin, TX, Huntsville, AL, Los Angeles, CA, or Washington, D.C. Remote work must allow access to Firefly facilities, customer sites, meetings, and other business locations as required. RESPONSIBILITIES: Manage initial intake and qualification of commercial and U.S. civil launch-service opportunities, including opportunities with NASA and other U.S. non-defense civil organizations, and commercial customers assigned by business leadership. Coordinate NDA status checks, initiation, and routing; facilitate early customer communications and meetings; identify missing information; and manage follow-up actions and internal responses. Support customer discovery sessions, initial capability discussions, and follow-up communications by accurately explaining Alpha launch-service capabilities and constraints while avoiding commitments beyond established authority. Gather and organize customer payload, orbit, launch window, quantity, cadence, schedule, acquisition strategy, payload-integration approach, and decision-process information needed to evaluate each opportunity. Coordinate initial technical feedback with Mission Management and translate customer needs into organized internal requests and possess the ability to recognize when deeper technical engagement is required. Research prospective customers and prepare concise company profiles addressing business model and credibility, prior launch history, existing Firefly relationships, known programs, prior launch providers, and competitive context. Develop recommendations for pursuit, deferral, non-pursuit, or senior leadership engagement, and prepare opportunity briefs that clearly identify decisions, risks, assumptions, and recommendation. Support development of rough-order-of-magnitude estimates, proposals, Statements of Work, capture materials, and customer-response packages by coordinating technical, schedule, pricing, contractual, and assumption inputs. Provide timely status updates, leadership briefs, and portfolio summaries; present findings and recommendations; and identify matters requiring senior business or technical judgment. Monitor customer, market, and competitive developments relevant to Alpha commercial and U.S. civil launch services and translate relevant findings into actionable opportunity insights. Identify and implement practical process improvements that increase the efficiency, consistency, responsiveness, and quality of customer intake, opportunity qualification, internal handoffs, onboarding, tracking, and proposal preparation. QUALIFICATIONS: Required: Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, systems engineering, another related engineering discipline, or a closely related technical field. 5+ years of relevant professional experience in aerospace, space systems, launch services, business development, mission management, customer-facing engineering, or related technical or commercial aerospace work. Working understanding of launch vehicles and launch services, including orbital mechanics, mission design, trajectory considerations, launch-vehicle performance and flight envelopes, propulsion fundamentals, payload integration, and launch operations. Experience working directly with customers or external stakeholders to conduct discovery, understand mission requirements, ask informed questions, and translate needs for technical and business teams. Familiarity with the business-development and capture lifecycle, including opportunity qualification, market and competitive analysis, capture gates, pursuit decisions, and proposal support. Demonstrated business and technical judgment when assessing customer credibility, mission fit, procurement maturity, strategic alignment, risks, and appropriate next steps. Excellent written, verbal, customer-facing, and technical communication skills, including the ability to prepare concise opportunity assessments and communicate effectively with customers, engineers, mission managers, business leaders, contracts professionals, civil agency representatives, and external partners. Demonstrated ability to operate independently under broad guidance, manage ambiguity, prioritize competing demands, and advance multiple customer opportunities concurrently in a fast-paced, distributed environment. Strong organizational and follow-through skills, including the ability to maintain complete records, track actions and deadlines, coordinate across time zones, and protect sensitive business and technical information. Ability to work effectively across technical and business teams, coordinate work without direct authority, and identify when engineering, legal, contracts, pricing, or senior leadership involvement is required. Proficiency with modern business-development, opportunity-management, collaboration, distributed-workplace, and document-management tools. Ability and willingness to travel approximately 25 percent and up to 50 percent when required. Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government Secret security clearance. Ability to meet Firefly export-control requirements. Desired 10+ years of relevant aerospace, space, launch-services, or technical business-development experience. Master's degree in an engineering or related technical discipline, an MBA, or another relevant graduate business degree. Active U.S. Government Secret or Top Secret security clearance. Direct experience with launch-services sales or business development, including Alpha-class or comparable launch vehicles. Experience supporting commercial satellite operators or manufacturers, NASA, or other U.S. civil-space customers. Experience applying business-development and capture processes, including opportunity qualification, capture gates, bid/no-bid thinking, and pursuit recommendations. Experience conducting customer, market, and competitive analysis and assessing strategic fit, repeat-business potential, and multi-launch opportunities. Experience developing or supporting proposals, Statements of Work development, launch-service or satellite contracts, aerospace service agreements, commercial terms, or civil-government solicitations. Experience supporting ROM development, pricing packages, business cases, or other customer-response materials. Experience improving customer onboarding, opportunity-management, proposal, or internal handoff processes. Experience preparing and presenting opportunity recommendations to senior leadership. Firefly offers outstanding benefits for our employees, including generous health, dental and vision plans with low plan deductibles, parental leave, educational reimbursement, short term disability, and flexible PTO options. To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you 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. Firefly Aerospace, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Firefly is governed based on merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status