Space Systems Operations

“You'll operate the GPS satellites that every phone, aircraft, ship, and precision weapon on Earth depends on — plus AEHF communications satellites and SBIRS missile warning systems. Billions of people use what you maintain every day and none of them know you exist, which is either deeply satisfying or deeply frustrating depending on your relationship with recognition. The Space Force is the newest branch in the DoD and you're building its culture from the inside. The defense space industry will pay well for this background.”

You operate military satellites from a ground control station that does not have windows and does have very specific expectations for watch-standing attention to detail. The Space Force is a new institution still figuring out what it means to be a Guardian — the culture, the uniform details, the promotion pathways are all evolving around you in real time. The work is genuinely consequential: when the satellite you're operating has an anomaly at 3 AM, the response has cascading effects on every system that depends on it, which is most of them. L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon actively recruit Space Force operators. 'I operate GPS satellites' is simultaneously the most and least impressive sentence you can say at a party, depending on the audience.