Inside a NASA Contractor Job: Systems Engineer Salary & Artemis Missions

Systems Engineer

This week—timely with Artemis II—we revisit a standout episode with NASA contractor systems engineer Johanna Siegel.

Johanna reveals what it really takes to build mission-critical hardware for the Artemis program—and the career opportunities and earnings potential that come with it. In this deep dive, discover how engineers translate complex requirements like radiation protection and life support systems into hardware that protects astronaut lives, plus real salary insights and how to break into aerospace engineering careers. 

If you're exploring aerospace engineering, space careers, or high-paying STEM jobs, this episode gives a clear look at the real work behind keeping humans alive in space.

"How Much Can I Make?" Is nominated for 2026 Women in Podcasting Award!

Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation

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Transcript

Why Revisit Artemis Now

Mirav Ozeri - Host 0:02

Hi! Welcome back to How Much Can I Make? I'm Arabuzeri. Since Automus 2 launched last week, it felt like a good time to revisit a segment from last year. In this episode, I spoke with Joanna Siegel, a young systems engineer working for a NASA contractor focused on astronaut health and comfort. She primarily works on Artemis 3 and the Lunar Lender, but also shares insight on Artemis 2. I found it fascinating, and I hope you do too. Here is Joanna Siegel. So thank you again for doing it. I'm so excited. And let's start by telling us what is your job exactly? What is it that you do?

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So it's a little bit complicated to explain, but essentially, I'm a systems engineer, and broadly, what a systems engineer does is ensure that all of the different components or elements of a larger system will be able to fit together into a finished product. I work at a contractor for NASA called KBR, and KBR holds the human health and performance contract. This basically means that if you work on this contract, you will be somehow interacting with the health and medical needs of the crew for a various amount of different missions. So some people on this contract work on the International Space Station and do real-time operations with the astronauts there and are in charge of things like the medical kits or the exercise that the astronauts on the International Space Station do. For me, I am working on the Artemis missions. The Artemis missions are NASA's push to bring humans back to the moon before eventually going to Mars.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 1:48

And how long are they gonna supposed to stay on the moon?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Um it depends. So Artemis III is the first lunar landing of the Artemis missions, and that stay is gonna be around six or seven days.

From Bioengineering To NASA Work

Mirav Ozeri - Host 2:02

Wow. Okay, I would like to back up for a second and tell me what was your journey like from graduating high school to landing this job?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

It's a bit of a windy one. So in high school, the first time I even heard about being an engineer and working at NASA was when I was touring colleges. And my mom and I went on a large road trip, and one of the places we visited was Houston. And while we were here visiting schools, we toured Johnson Space Center. They brought us into one of the mission control rooms that they use for simulations. And I was looking at the at the all the different signs that were there and all the different console positions, and there was one that had three letters, BME. And I knew going into college that I wanted to study engineering, and so I saw these letters and I immediately thought biomedical engineering. And so I asked the tour guide, what does BME stand for? Does it stand for biomedical engineering? And he said, Yes, that's exactly right. Um, this is a console position that deals with the health of astronauts while they're on a space station. And that kind of blew my mind because I always thought that going into the space industry, you had to have a background in aerospace engineering. So this kind of piqued my interest, and it was something that I decided that I really wanted to try to do one day. I eventually ended up going to the University of Pittsburgh and I did study bioengineering, and Pitt did not have any aerospace engineering classes or programs, so I didn't really get any educational background in aerospace engineering while I was there. So all throughout college, I pretty much applied for all the NASA internships I could find. Never got a single one of them. But while I was at Pitt, I did get some very valuable industry experience through co-ops and internships, and these were in the medical device field. And then my first job out of college was at a medical device company. And so I was a development engineer there and I worked there for almost two years. I was on a team that developed the CPAP masks that patients use while they're uh getting treatment from a CPAP machine at night to treat sleep apnea.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 4:05

Oh, really? Wow. Okay, so back to your current job. All of a sudden, one day you got a notice that you got a job with a company that works with NASA? Did it blow your mind?

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Yes. Um, yeah, I had been applying still while I was working full-time, but yeah, I got an email back from KBR saying that they wanted to interview me for this position. I ended up getting an offer.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 4:29

So, how long have you been with this company?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

It will be two years at the end of this month.

Radiation Suits And Waste Systems

Mirav Ozeri - Host 4:33

So now you're developing and working on all stages of the lunar lender, right? From takeoff for the lunar being there. Give me an example of a thing that you develop.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

I'll give you an idea of what my specific role covers. So all the people on my team are in charge of different discipline areas and the requirements that are associated with those areas. So we're essentially making sure that the vehicle is going to be in compliance with all of the requirements. So, for example, my areas that I am sort of the manager of the requirements for are radiation. So making sure that the crew are protected from radiation and they'll below likelihood of having long-term effects of radiation once they return to Earth. The IVA suit, which stands for intravehicular activity, so it's the suit that they wear inside the lander when they're doing dynamic phases. So, like while they're actively landing on the moon, they'll be wearing this suit in case of any kind of emergency. And then the third area is the waste management system. So this includes the toilet, the trash. Um, yeah, making sure that the biological waste does not contaminate the living quarters of the crew. So there is a bathroom on lander and there's a toilet, and it's not the typical type of flush toilet that we have on Earth. So there's no water involved because water is a scarce resource for these missions. And essentially the toilet has to function while you're in microgravity, which is essentially weightless.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 6:04

That's another problem.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yes. And it has to function while it's in lunar gravity, which is about one-sixth of Earth's gravity.

Testing Hardware Clothing And Food

Mirav Ozeri - Host 6:12

When you develop something, you have to test it first, right? Obviously. How do you test it here on Earth?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

So a lot of the functions of hardware sometimes don't depend on the gravity conditions, so like electronics and things like that. But for things that are affected by gravity, a lot of the times if they need to test in a microgravity environment, they will bring that hardware to the space station and test it up there. Because the space station is constantly crewed, it always has astronauts on it, and they're really set up to do science and experimentation in a microgravity environment. And I remember one time I was uh observing a crew clothing evaluation. So this would be the clothing that they just wear day to day on the surface of the moon. And all of these textile engineers were sitting in the room, and there was one crew member there, and he was trying on all the different clothing, the different jackets and pants that he's gonna have to wear, and giving feedback on it. Like, is this zipper in the right place? Or like, should the velcro be over here versus over here? Or what do you think about this pocket?

Mirav Ozeri - Host 7:16

So the textile they're using is completely different than one we use here on Earth because it has to fight radiation.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

I said the biggest consideration they have to take into account when developing clothing or any kind of soft goods is flammability because the oxygen environment in the lander is a higher concentration than it is on Earth. And so they have to ensure that if a fire did break out, that clothing would not catch on fire in that elevated oxygen environment.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 7:44

There's so many things to consider. You mentioned food, and I read that when uh Senator Kelly came back that he lost a lot of weight because he didn't really like the food, even though he tested it before. The food is mostly packaged and is it powder?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Is it usually it's uh dehydrated food, so like it's not necessarily a powder, but it's just had all the water sucked out of it. And then when they send it back up to space, they have the ability to rehydrate it from their water supply. It can be a big issue because if astronauts are not meeting their daily calorie requirement in space, then they're not gonna have enough energy to perform their tasks, especially if they have to go out and do an extra vehicular activity because those are can be very long in duration and they're very taxing on the body.

Behavioral Health And Health Monitoring

Mirav Ozeri - Host 8:33

And by the way, your department probably not, uh but maybe other department in your company, do they deal with the mental health of the astronauts?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yes. So there's a whole lab at Johnson Space Center called the Behavioral Health and Performance Lab, and they do a lot of work on determining like how they can best maintain the psychological well-being of crew members, especially for long-duration missions. Um, and one of the ways they do this is they have basically a simulated habitat on at Johnson Space Center, and they have human test subjects who voluntarily sign up for these studies to go and live in that habitat with three or four other crew members, and they stay there for durations of up to 45 days, and they're given tasks to do every day. They're basically on a mission, obviously not in space, like they do have contact with Earth, but they try to simulate different communication delays on Mars. For example, the delay between communication one way is 20 minutes, and so for those types of simulated missions, they will simulate that communication delay. And of course, if there's any kind of emergency, they would be able to reach them right away. But they're trying to see how teams interact with each other and the dynamics of teams when they're stuck in a place together for a long duration and basically have no privacy.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 9:59

Okay, back to the astronauts. Is there a way that you can monitor their health while they're up there? And is it 24-7?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

It depends on what is being monitored. So, for example, like there's a radiation monitor on the lander that will alert the crew if there's gonna be a radiation event that they need to take precautions for, and that will also be sent to mission control as well. So the people monitoring the vehicle from Earth will know. The crew are also wearing sort of like a personal dosimeter, which will tell the crew personally how much dose they got. The crew will know, but that data won't be known by like the people on Earth until the mission is over.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 10:39

Oh, really? So they can have uh permanent damage, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

It's possible for like a large event to cause permanent damage once they return to Earth, but it would be a very long-term thing. Yeah, space radiation does have the potential to cause cancer later in life in some cases.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 10:58

This sounds like an amazing job. How much can somebody earn? What is the potential earning for an engineer in such a department?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

I would say it depends on a lot of factors. Um, like, for example, where you live, it can the cost of living can vary greatly in different parts of the country. And your specific background, so like if you have a bachelor's degree versus also having a master's degree, what's your degree? I have a bachelor's in bioengineering.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 11:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

So there's many different factors when it goes into deciding the pay. But for example, when I first got out of college and I worked at my at the medical device company, my starting salary was around$75,000 a year. That was in Pittsburgh, and so the cost of living was lower than it is in Houston. And so now, after two years of experience, my pay is around 95. That includes, you know, like merit increases and things like that. Because it is a government contract, it's not going to be the same level of pay as if I were in private industry. If I worked for a private company like SpaceX or Blue Origin, then I would probably be making a lot more.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 12:05

Oh, a lot more. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yes. Yeah, because they they just have more budget um to be able to accommodate higher salaries. But because it's a government contract, it's much more limited.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 12:17

Do you get to meet the astronauts, by the way?

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Yeah, I have met some astronauts. Yes. I was totally starstruck whenever I was in a room with them. But basically, they're the experts on space flight and what it's like to be in space. So we have to talk to them to be like, hey, are you guys actually gonna like this food that we're planning to send up there? Like, is this something that feasibly will make a difference in your life in space? Because no one else has that direct experience.

The Hard Part Is Coordination

Mirav Ozeri - Host 12:46

What would you say is the biggest challenge of your job? I mean, there are millions of challenges, I know, because every little step in in the space travel is a challenge. But what would you say developing something like this uh is the biggest challenge?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

I would say, from a personal standpoint, I would say it's probably the amount of people that need to be involved in certain decisions. So there's tons of different offices at NASA who are stakeholders on all of these pieces of hardware and requirements. And whenever there's a decision that needs to be made, I have to make sure that all of the proper stakeholders and representatives at NASA are consulted for their expertise on the question. And because I'm not an expert, I graduated college four years ago and I I'm not a like PhD or anything like that. Um, but I do have some technical background, and so I can tell when there's gonna be a need for certain stakeholders to be consulted. So I'd say that's the biggest challenge for me personally is like ensuring that all of the proper experts are able to give their opinion on a certain question or problem that comes up.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 13:56

What would be the the biggest challenge when they're staying for six days on the moon?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

I would say probably making sure that the crew are equipped to deal with any medical situations that arise, ensuring that the medical kit has all of the instruments or pharmaceuticals that they would need to treat any predicted medical events. My team does work very closely with medical doctors who are specifically certified to be flight doctors, and they're the experts in space medicine. And this is a field that I'm personally very interested in and want to learn more about. So working with these flight surgeons is a very cool experience because they can tell you, like, oh, we need to design the table of the lander in this way so that they could use it also as a medical station if needed. Like it needs to be this specific shape or this width and not have handles in certain places because that could obstruct someone from trying to treat a patient who's on the medical table. Or like placement of medical supplies. So, like, where are we gonna store the medical kit so that it will be accessible if the crew were to need it?

Mirav Ozeri - Host 15:08

And you have to still design it in a way that it with fits in the small lunar.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

The storage capability of the landers is also a big uh consideration.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 15:17

How do you work on something that once it goes up there, you have no control? You can't really help if it's something that totally surprises you. How how how do you count for that?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

That's definitely a good question, and it is a problem, especially for missions that will eventually go to Mars, because there's such a big communication delay even with the people who are going to Mars. So it really comes down to setting the crew up for success with maintaining hardware. So making sure that the hardware is designed in a way that if it needs to be maintained, that it can easily be opened and inspected, and potentially sending up tools or like replacement or repair kits for different hardware that's essential to the mission.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 16:02

So you're working and developing things now that will happen in 2027.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Yes, and later, because our team is working currently on Artemis III, Artemis IV, and Artemis V. And these are all lunar missions.

Designing For Diverse Crews

Mirav Ozeri - Host 16:14

I love it by the way that they call it Artemis, named after Apollo's twin sister, because at this stage they're gonna have for the first time a person of color and a woman. So I love that they call it Artemis, but does it complicate in any way your work that there will be a woman? Is it different needs from a man? Is there issues there with what you're developing?

SPEAKER_00 16:38

I would say the main accommodations that we would need to make is dealing with the menstrual cycle. So collecting, we know we're gonna have to collect that kind of waste, so just planning for uh that capability. And then I guess sizing could be an issue. So, like when you're trying to decide the dimensions of different hardware or the placement of different things, or for example, like the step height of like steps on the Lunar Lander, you have to design for the whole anthropometric range of like the first percentile female to the 99th percentile male, and you have to make sure that anyone within that anthropometric range will be able to use the hardware the same way.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 17:19

Do they give you the exact measurement of each astronaut? Do they know already who are the astronauts that will go? That's a good question.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Um, yeah, so Artemis III, there has not been crew named for yet. So we don't know exactly who is going to be flying. The only things that may need to be held off on before deciding or when crew are decided is, for example, the size of the spacesuits. Because depending on what crew is selected, they would send up one size or the other. But yeah, everything else that is designed for the lander is pretty much agnostic of the crew. They just need to be trained on it at some point.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 17:56

But if you design everything for uh, let's say 5.5 tall person, and then all of a sudden 6.1 astronauts shows up, that changes your whole configuration, no?

SPEAKER_00 18:07

It can, but that's the reason why we have the requirements for designing within a certain anthropometric range. And this is something that also is a problem on Earth because if you're designing a commercial product or like a building or an elevator, you have to know that the general public is gonna be using this. So you have this wide range of sized people that are gonna need to do the same task. So that is one of the issues that also kind of translates to space when you don't know who you're gonna be designing for. In the past, the astronaut core of NASA has been pretty uniform. For example, like they're all men in the past, like historically with Apollo, they're all men, they're all white men, they're all usually have some kind of military background, they're all in great physical shape. And so you didn't really have to consider a super wide range of people when you were designing for the Apollo missions. But for Artemis, and because we're gonna be getting not just military people, but people who are civilians and who are scientists, that might need to be taken into consideration for designing.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 19:10

Oh, there will be some scientists going to space?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yes, for Artemis II, there have been crew selected, and this is a mission where they're not landing on the moon, but they're gonna be circling it and coming back. Christina Cook, who's one of the astronauts going on Artemis II, she is a scientist and she's an engineer. She doesn't have any military or like formal like piloting experience. She's she's one of the mission specialists on the Artemis II mission.

Space Tech That Helps On Earth

Mirav Ozeri - Host 19:36

Nice. Is there any benefit here on Earth from everything that your department and your company developed, health-wise or otherwise? Is there anything that we gained in here on Earth because of this research?

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Definitely. And I think not even as a result of my project, but of the space flight history and NASA in general, yes, there has been so much technology that has been developed for space flight that has eventually made it back into the earth on Earth and something that people use every day. So, for example, baby formula. What that was as a result of a lot of the food that they would send up to astronauts, they would have to find a way to dehydrate it, make it as light as possible to be able to launch it. So that technology has influenced the baby formula industry on Earth too.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 20:30

Who knew? Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

I think there's a whole website actually about the different technologies that have been developed for spaceflight that are now used on Earth. I think memory foam is another one of them.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 20:42

What was that? Memory foam?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Yes, memory foam.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 20:45

Really?

SPEAKER_00 20:46

How did memory foam come into that? I think it might have been like a type of padding or sound abatement or something like that that they figured out could also be very comfortable to lie on.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 20:57

It's endless.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

It is, it is.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 20:59

Does it ever overwhelm you when you think about that? You're working on something that will actually somebody will use on the moon?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yes. It's very mind-blowing for sure. Yeah, I I'm a huge nerd, and uh I just can't imagine like when that lander finally goes to the moon that I can say like I will have had an impact on that mission.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 21:22

From all the things that you're developing, what's the most exciting technology you ran into or development that you ran into?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

I honestly would probably say the the toilet that's used because that's such a common everyday thing that we do on Earth and don't even think about. But when you're in space, it's so different. And you have to, I'd say it's like something that needs to be almost completely redesigned for space because it needs to be able to collect and contain waste in a microgravity environment, and it needs to be able to control odors and control any releases that might. happen, I I would say that's the that's the one that really hit home for me because it's something that's so easy here on Earth, but that is a big challenge in space.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 22:10

I wanted to ask you what's the biggest reward, but I guess the reward is gonna be years from now, right? When all the astronauts what's the biggest reward?

SPEAKER_00 22:19

That's very true. It's a definitely delayed gratification. We won't see the results of our work until it's actually flying in in a few years. I would say for me personally the greatest reward is being able to work on something that I have a personal interest in. I love learning about space and so every day that I'm able to like learn something new or think about astronauts going to space, it's very personally rewarding for me, which I think is a really unique thing to find in a job and is something that I'm very grateful for.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 22:52

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Being in this job has opened me up to learning so much more about the spaceflight industry. I didn't really know much about it coming in and I didn't know all of the aspects that go into human spaceflight. And so now that I'm here I've learned about a lot more jobs and fields that I might be interested in in the future. So I'm very grateful that this job has opened up that world for me and giving me the exposure and the experience to be able to transition into maybe another job in the future that I learned will interest me.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 23:26

But you're gonna stay in the space industry.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

I think so it's the one thing that really interests me. So I think I'll be here for a while.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 23:33

That's fantastic. Well Joanna like I promised you I'm not gonna take too much of your time because I could speak for you for hours. But I wanna thank you for your time. This has been like a whole new world to me. I must admit I never thought about the medical and health issues of the astronauts and the whole behind the scene is a huge industry.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

It is massive it is a huge amount of people and a huge amount of work but you do only end up seeing like the four astronauts that are launched and like a lot of the times like yeah you don't even think about the things that might have gone into the planning. And that's something I didn't even think about before I got this job either. But I have since learned a lot.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 24:15

That is so interesting. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Yeah thank you so much I'm glad to be able to get this type of job out there because I don't think a lot of people realize that this type of job exists.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 24:26

I don't think so either I mean it's still hard for me to wrap my mind around it that we were talking about a lunar lander that you're working on.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

I know every time there's a full moon and I get a chance to like look at the moon I'm just like wow we're gonna be going there soon one day it's a very weird feeling.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 24:44

Must be now I'll think about it when I look at the moon yes all right thanks a million. Yeah thank you so much amazing and you'll hear from me a few years from now I'm gonna be following the lunar lander very closely now.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Good I can't wait.

Questions Comments And Subscribe

Mirav Ozeri - Host 25:00

I'll keep an eye out okay that's a wrap for today if you have a comment or question or would like us to cover a certain job please let us know. Visit our website at how much can I make that info we would love to hear from you and on your way out don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job. See you next time