Senior Software Engineer - Space Reliability

Spire; Glasgow; Hybrid; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

Spire is seeking a Software Engineer to help transform satellite operations through automation and data intelligence. The role involves designing automated recovery pipelines and building data platforms for telemetry. You will collaborate with mission teams to create solutions that address operational challenges.

The ideal candidate has over 5 years of experience in software engineering, strong Python skills, and is adept at Linux system administration. Spire offers a hybrid work model, requiring at least three days in the office weekly.

Qualifications

• Expertise in Python for back-end services and automation.
• Experience in data analysis and working with complex technical problems.
• Strong understanding of Linux, including scripting.

Responsibilities

• Design and build automated recovery pipelines for satellites.
• Build flexible data platforms for telemetry.
• Define reliability metrics and monitor systems.

Skills

Python

Data analysis

Linux fundamentals

Containerized environments

Communication

Education

5+ years in software engineering, SRE, or DevOps

Tools

Postgres

Grafana

Terraform

Job description

Spire is making a fundamental shift in how it operates its constellation. We are moving from a model where trained operators watch dashboards and upscale to experts, to one where the system is fully autonomous, self-healing, and data intelligent. This team is building that future, and this role sits at the center of it.

The old model relies on operators, escalations, manual processes, and institutional knowledge locked in the heads of a few experts. It does not scale and it does not belong in a modern space company. We know what we want to replace it with: SRE principles applied to a constellation, autonomous fault handling, AI-driven anomaly detection, low toil, high data quality, and continuous improvement baked into the system.

You will be one of the engineers who makes that real.

What You Will Work On

Autonomous Operations

• Design and build fault detection, isolation, and automated recovery pipelines for satellites and ground stations
• Drive elimination of manual processes. If a human is doing it repeatedly, automate it.
• Build space situational awareness systems so the fleet always knows its own state
• Develop operational automation for mission execution at scale

Telemetry and Data Platform

• Architect and build a flexible data platform that ingests, stores, and surfaces telemetry from space and ground assets
• Build analytics and visualization tools that surface operational insight and not just raw data
• Apply ML and AI techniques to detect anomalies, predict failures, andoptimizeconstellation performance
• Work directly with data at every layer from pipeline design to query

Reliability Engineering

• Define and instrument SLOs and reliability metrics for space and ground assets
• Build monitoring and alerting systems that know what matters and ruthlessly suppress noise
• Own configuration control and software rollout processes for on-orbit and ground assets

Mission Software

• Build real-time dashboards and operator tooling that make mission statusimmediatelylegible
• Collaborate directly with satellite operators and mission teams to turn operational pain into software solutions
• Design systems for automated mission execution including planning, scheduling, and commanding at scale

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering, SRE, or DevOps experience
• Strong Python skills across backend services, data pipelines, and automation. Not just scripts.
• Real experienceapplying data analysis to solve complex operational or technical problems, comfortable working directly with data at every layer from pipeline design to query
• Solid Linux fundamentals including bash scripting andbasicsystem administration
• Experience with containerized development and production environments
• The communication skills to work across engineering, operations, and mission teams and translate real-world requirements into working software

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with data backends such as Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch, or S3
• Hands-on experience with Databricks or modern dataLakehousetooling
• Experience building or operating monitoring and alerting systems such as Grafana, Prometheus, or Nagios
• Infrastructure as Code experience with tools such as Terraform or Ansible
• ML or AI applications in an operational ormonitoringcontext
• Experience with Python data visualization libraries

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three business days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying.

About Spire

We improve life on Earth with data from space.

Spire Global is a space-to-cloud analytics company that owns and operates the largest multi-purpose constellation of satellites. Its proprietary data and algorithms provide the most advanced maritime, aviation, and weather tracking in the world.

In addition to its constellation, Spire’s data infrastructure includes a global ground station network and 24/7 operations that provide real-time global coverage of every point on Earth.

Spire is Global and our success draws upon the diverse viewpoints, skills and experiences of our employees. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or veteran status.

To help maintain a safe and secure workplace for Spire employees, all candidates who receive a conditional offer will be required to complete a background check . This may include criminal history and employment verification.

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Kindly be advised that communication regarding your application may come from @spire.com, @recruiting.spire.com, or from Candidate.fyi (our scheduling tool).