Staff Lunar Environments Engineer

Vast is developing next-generation space stations and space infrastructure using an incremental, hardware-rich, and low-cost approach. Vast is rapidly developing its multi-module Haven Station to ensure a continuous human presence in space for America and its allies, enabling advanced microgravity research and manufacturing, and unlocking a new space economy for government, corporate, and private customers. Haven Demo’s 2025 success made Vast the only operational commercial space station company to fly and operate its own spacecraft. Next, Haven-1 is expected to become the world’s first commercial space station when it launches in 2027, followed by additional Haven modules. Additionally, the company recently announced Vast Satellite, a high-power satellite product line leveraging its space station components and the heritage of Haven Demo.

Headquartered in Long Beach, California, and with more than 1,000 employees and over a billion dollars in private capital, Vast has built the facilities required to manufacture and operate America’s next space station. The company plans to develop future habitats and systems for the Moon and Mars, dedicated space stations for government partners, and other crewed systems that will unlock the expanding long-term space economy.

Vast is seeking a Staff Lunar Environments Engineer, reporting to the Senior Vice President, Lunar Programs, to lead the characterization of the natural and induced hazards of the lunar surface including regolith and dust, radiation, micrometeorite flux, thermal and solar conditions, and terrain/geography, and drive their translation into concrete design requirements across Vast's Lunar ecosystem. Our team is applying the technology, infrastructure, and knowledge built across our Haven Demo, Haven-1, Haven Station, and Vast Satellite programs to a new frontier: the Moon. Our Lunar program isn't starting from scratch, giving this founding team an extraordinary running start to help shape humanity's next era of lunar exploration from day one.

As one of the earliest engineers on the Lunar team, you will work in close partnership with our Systems Architect and directly with hardware engineers to ensure every element of Vast's lunar systems including habitats, surface systems, mechanisms, and crew interfaces is designed against the reality of the lunar environment, not assumptions carried over from Earth-orbit or Earth-based systems. You will set the technical standards and methodologies the broader engineering organization uses to assess environmental risk, and serve as the go-to technical expert when environment-driven design questions arise. This is a hands-on, first-principles role: when dust accumulates on a suit at the airlock, you're the person who defines what that means for seal wear, air system contamination, and mechanism life — and you lead the cross-functional effort to solve it.

This will be a full-time, exempt position located in our Long Beach location.

• Lead characterization of lunar-specific environmental hazards including one or more of regolith and dust properties, radiation, micrometeorite and secondary ejecta environment, thermal extremes and solar illumination cycles, and terrain/geography relevant to Vast's target landing and operations sites

• Establish the design requirements, constraints, and margins derived from environmental characterization, and drive their adoption across systems architecture, structures, mechanisms, Life Support Systems (ECLSS), power, avionics, and human factors teams

• Partner directly with the Systems Architect to embed lunar environmental risk into the end-to-end architecture of Vast's