Space Threat Specialist , Leo Launch Security

Description

This role is essential to deliver consistent, mission-aligned security postures at every launch site; eliminating operational variance, ensuring traceability, and maintaining compliance throughout the mission lifecycle.
The ideal candidate will bring expertise in infrastructure security assessments, aerospace operations security, and stakeholder engagement with launch providers. This is a field-facing, technically oriented role responsible for conducting standardized security evaluations of new or unfamiliar facilities, developing mission-specific security requirements, and working directly with launch providers to establish Amazon-controlled expectations rather than relying on provider-defined standards.
With Amazon's expanding launch operations currently spanning multiple launch providers with additional contracts and locations under evaluation; this role provides the scalability needed to ensure security grows in pace with the program's increasing footprint and launch cadence.
Must be able to pass and maintain a Federal Kennedy Space Center badge

Key job responsibilities
• Provide tailored analysis that combines deep space-domain knowledge — orbital environment, launch and range operations, ground segment, and the commercial and national-security space ecosystem — with open-source data to forecast how threats translate into business impact for Amazon’s space program.
• Identify, analyze, and mitigate security threats to the satellite constellation, launch sites, payload processing, and ground infrastructure, keeping the emphasis on measurable security outcomes and risk reduction.
• Set strategy where it is undefined: define the business problem, set objectives, analyze data, and influence resource allocation and trade-offs across Leo and partner organizations using threat-driven, business-impact justification.
• Translate specialized space-threat analysis into forward-looking security posture, mechanisms, and standards that partner teams adopt, and embed space-threat considerations into system design, site security assessments, and mission planning.
• Develop per-campaign and per-mission threat profiles assessing site-specific, regional, and geopolitical risk to launch operations, and integrate them into site security assessments, evaluation frameworks, and mission security plans in partnership with Launch Operations and Program Management.
• Track the evolving space-threat landscape — counter-space developments, threats to orbital and ground systems, commercial espionage, and supply-chain risk across the space supply base — and forecast how they translate into business and operational impact over time.
• Build repeatable mechanisms and processes that mitigate risk for partner organizations, decouple dependencies, eliminate duplicate effort, and increase the speed and quality of security delivery in the space domain.
• Advise senior leadership through clear written narratives and verbal briefings that drive business and technical decisions, communicating to internal, cross-org, and leadership teams.
• Conduct competitive and commercial analysis of the space sector to anticipate risks to Amazon’s position, including adversary targeting of peer space operators and the broader space supply base.
• Partner with export-control and industrial-security teams to ensure analytical activities and products align with ITAR/EAR and related requirements, and interpret their impact on space programs and cross-border technology flows.
• Hold the team and partners to a high standard for both solutions and practices; mentor and develop others in space-threat analysis and tradecraft.
• Develop and maintain relationships with industry peers, government agencies, space operators, and space-security communities to strengthen Amazon’s space-threat awareness and represent Amazon in external engagements.

A day in the life
No two days look the same, and that is the nature of the role. You might start the morning reviewing open-source developments across the space sector and assessing what a competitor’s launch anomaly, a new counter-space capability, or a shift in the geopolitical picture means for Amazon’s upcoming campaigns. By mid-morning you could be partnering with Launch Operations to shape the threat profile for an upcoming mission, then joining an engineering discussion where you help the team weigh a security trade-off for a upcoming launch. In the afternoon you might brief a Director on how an emerging risk could affect a launch window, build a mechanism that lets partner teams act on space-threat considerations without you in the room, and mentor a teammate through their first mission threat assessment. Throughout, your work stays anchored to a single question: what reduces real risk to the mission, and how do you move the organization to act on it before a threat becomes a problem.

About the team
Leo's Launch Security Team protects Amazon's intellectual property, hardware assets, and launch operations across production and production sites worldwide. The Launch Security pillar delivers governance, intelligence, risk management, and compliance assurance; including infrastructure security assessments, risk treatment planning, audit management, guard force oversight, access control validation, incident response readiness, and new-site security baselining. We work with internal engineering, operations, legal, and corporate security teams as well as external auditors, regulatory bodies, and vendors to ensure Leo's production facilities maintain a robust and continuously improving security posture at every stage, from site activation through operational maturity.

Inclusive Team Culture

In Amazon Security, it's in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices.

Training & Career Growth

We're continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth's Best Employer. That's why you'll find endless knowledge-sharing, training, and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

Basic Qualifications

- 5+ years of program management, project management or product management experience
- 7+ years of experience in threat analysis, security analysis, or risk assessment within a government, critical-infrastructure, or highly-regulated sector, with direct experience in space, aerospace, defense, or national security.
- Demonstrated deep domain expertise in the space-security threat landscape — counter-space capabilities, threats to orbital and ground systems, and adversary targeting of commercial space operators.
- Demonstrated ability to provide tailored analysis combining space-domain knowledge with open-source data to forecast business and operational impacts.
- Experience working across an organization to define strategy, influence resource allocation, and lead execution on complex, cross-functional security programs.
- Experience distilling complex analysis into clear written narratives and briefings for senior leadership and executive audiences.
- Ability to travel up to 20% to support launch campaigns, site evaluations, and partner engagements at domestic and international locations.
- Bachelor’s degree in security management, homeland security, risk assessment, or related field.

Preferred Qualifications

- Possess an active TS/SCI clearance or have held a TS/SCI clearance within the last 2 years.
- Experience overseeing security protocols in aerospace environments with complex regulatory and operational risk landscapes.
- Experience in industrial security design implementation within high-security technology or manufacturing environments.
- Familiarity with security industry standards (CPTED, ASIS standards, tiered classification frameworks).
- Experience working with contract security providers (guard force, monitoring services, system integrators).
- Knowledge of access control, intrusion detection, video surveillance, and alarm monitoring systems.
- Professional certifications such as CPP, PSP, PCI, or equivalent security industry credentials.
- Experience with export control compliance (ITAR/EAR) in a manufacturing or lab environment.
- Experience managing capital and operational security budgets across multiple facilities.
- Experience building launch playbooks or repeatable processes for new site security standup.
- Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity, drive programs to completion, and influence without authority

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits .

USA, FL, Kennedy Space Center - 119,300.00 - 208,900.00 USD annually