Flight Dynamics Software Engineer

Frontdoor Defense; Toulouse; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

35 days PTO + flexible hours

Health and life insurance

Lunch vouchers

Travel opportunities across San Francs

Off-sites and team events

Relocation assistance to Toulouse

Job summary

Loft Orbital in Toulouse is seeking a Flight Dynamics Software Engineer to join the Ground Platform team. You will develop and maintain the flight dynamics software stack to scale for 50+ satellites and ensure automated, reliable, and safe operations.

You will implement orbit determination/propagation and attitude modeling, contribute to open-source tooling, and build backend services that manage ephemerides, maneuvers, and conjunction data for multiple missions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in physics or an engineering discipline.
• Strong background in orbital mechanics and state estimation.
• Experience with software libraries and backend services, preferably in Python.
• Excellent communication skills, written and verbal.

Responsibilities

• Implement and improve orbit determination and propagation algorithms.
• Develop and maintain in-house flight dynamics backend applications for ephemerides and maneuvers.
• Interface with mission engineers to translate requirements into operational outcomes.
• Support LEOP/anomalies/conjunction response and configure software for missions.

Skills

Orbital mechanics

State estimation

Maneuver planning

Conjunction assessment

Attitude modeling

Numerical methods

Python

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in physics or an engineering discipline

Tools

STK

Astrogator

GMAT

OreKit

OpenSpaceToolkit

Job description

Flight Dynamics Software Engineer

Build and maintain the flight dynamics software stack for a 50-satellite constellation

Location: Toulouse, Occitanie

About The Role

Flight Dynamics Software Engineer

Loft Orbital is looking for a Flight Dynamics Software Engineer to join the Ground Platform organization.

You'll work on a small and driven team, developing our flight dynamics software stack so that it can:

• Scale to fly 50+ satellites in orbit in a highly automated, reliable, and safe (from a collision avoidance perspective) manner
• Enable new conops and customer missions with demanding orbit determination, stationkeeping, and attitude performance requirements

We're looking for someone with a solid theoretical understanding of astrodynamics, operational flight-dynamics experience, and software-engineering foundations. If you enjoy solving hard problems and working in a fast-paced and supportive environment, we'd love to hear from you.

About this role:

• Implement and improve upon algorithms for orbit determination, orbit propagation, maneuver planning (stationkeeping/orbit transfer), conjunction assessment, collision avoidance, and attitude modeling, contributing to our open-source astrodynamics tooling that powers both flight operations and simulation work across the company
• Develop and maintain the in-house flight dynamics ground software backend applications that compute, store, and serve our fleet's ephemerides, maneuvers, conjunctions, target orbits, etc
• Interface with systems and mission engineers to help translate technical mission requirements and customer demands into operational outcomes in orbit
• Support satellite operations engineers by providing astrodynamics expertise during LEOP/anomalies/conjunction response and assisting with configuring our software stack for various customer missions

Must Haves:

• Bachelor's degree in physics or an engineering discipline
• Deep technical understanding of some of the following topics: orbital mechanics, state estimation, spacecraft maneuver planning, conjunction assessment, and spacecraft attitude modeling
• Fundamentals of numerical methods: solvers, optimization, and simulation techniques
• Experience with designing and developing software libraries and backend services, preferably in Python.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal

Nice to Haves:

• Master's degree in physics or an engineering discipline
• Proficiency in astrodynamics tools such as STK, Astrogator, GMAT, OreKit, Monte, Copernicus, OpenSpaceToolkit, or equivalent.
• Demonstrated practical experience in spacecraft constellation flight dynamics operations
• Demonstrated practical experience building high-performance backend software applications and/or libraries
• Capable of solving complex problems within a highly collaborative environment

Some of Our Awesome Benefits:

• Equity, we want you to have an active role in our success
• Up to 35 days of Paid Time Off (vacations & RTT) and flexible working hours, we want you to be at your best
• Health and life insurance, we care about your health
• Lunch Vouchers, because let's be honest, we love food! (we even have a slack channel about it #loft-gourmand)
• Cross-office travel opportunities between San Francisco, Colorado, and Toulouse to learn from our differences
• Company and team off-sites and many other events to work & celebrate together
• Relocation assistance to Toulouse when applicable

Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented people tend to only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Loft, we value respectful debate and people who aren't afraid to challenge assumptions. We strongly encourage you to apply, even if you don't check all the boxes.

Loft: Space Made Simple.

Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable, and simple way to deploy missions in orbit.

We integrate, launch, and operate spacecraft, offering end-to-end missions as a service across Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on-orbit AI, national security missions, and more. Leveraging our existing space infrastructure and an extensive inventory of satellite buses, Loft is reducing years-long integration and launch timelines to months. With more than 30 missions flown, Loft's flight heritage and proven technologies enable customers to focus on their mission objectives.

With a growing fleet on track to reach 30 satellites by 2027, we are scaling up quickly across our offices in San Francisco, CA | Golden, CO | and Toulouse, France to meet accelerating demand for space infrastructure.

As an international company your resume will be reviewed by people across our offices so please attach a copy in English.