Ground Systems Software Engineer – Real-Time Space Ops

Varda Space Industries, Inc.; El Segundo (CA); Hybrid; USD 131,000 - 184,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Relocation support

401(k) with 6% company match

Medical, Dental, Vision insurance

Wellness reimbursement

Parental leave

One Medical membership

EV charging on site

Job summary

Varda Space Industries, Inc. in El Segundo, CA seeks a seasoned Ground Segment Software Engineer to own telemetry ingestion, real-time control, and mission platform tooling.

You will deliver operator-grade dashboards, run flight-software simulations, and build production-ready CI/CD and IaC pipelines across lab, test, and on-orbit environments. You will bring 3+ years in safety-critical software, strong Python skills, real-time/low-latency data handling, and expertise in CI/CD, observability,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering or equivalent technical experience in safety critical software.
• 3+ years of experience in the development of spacecraft or similar safety critical software.
• Expertise with development in Python, along with a strong understanding of the language concepts.
• Strong systems fundamentals: concurrency, networking, performance, reliability.
• Experience building real-time data acquisition, scaling, and distribution services - low-latency messaging, time-series and relational stores.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD, dependency/build systems, and infrastructure-as-code.
• End-to-end observability experience: logging, metrics, tracing.
• Docker/Kubernetes; release management, phased rollouts, and operational readiness for controlled networks.

Responsibilities

• Own Ground Segment Services: Develop and maintain high-reliability services for telemetry ingestion, scaling, distribution, and commanding.
• Mission Control Interfaces: Deliver operator-grade UIs and dashboards that optimize"ops time" and reduce cognitive load across integration, test, and on-orbit operations phases.
• Simulation and Test Automation: Build tools to run flight-software simulations, device emulators, and scenario-based automated tests enabling fast, safe iteration for avionics, GNC, and operations teams.
• Build the Mission Platform: Design, implement, and productionize software for mission and ground software teams. Standardize CI/CD pipelines, artifact management, service templates, infrastructure-as-code, simulation and hardware-in-the-loop frameworks, test harnesses, and observability - all delivered as self-service tooling.
• Deployments Across Environments: Create robust deployment patterns for lab benches, test stands, and mission networks. Implement safe rollout/rollback strategies and air-gapped or limited-connectivity deployment approaches.

Skills

Python

Real-time software

Concurrency

Networking

CI/CD

Infrastructure-as-code

Observability

Docker

Kubernetes

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering or equivalent

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Varda Space Industries, Inc. in El Segundo, CA seeks a seasoned Ground Segment Software Engineer to own telemetry ingestion, real-time control, and mission platform tooling.

You will deliver operator-grade dashboards, run flight-software simulations, and build production-ready CI/CD and IaC pipelines across lab, test, and on-orbit environments. You will bring 3+ years in safety-critical software, strong Python skills, real-time/low-latency data handling, and expertise in CI/CD, observability,