Lead Ground-Segment & Mission Control Software Engineer

Varda Space Industries; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 169,000 - 216,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Relocation assistance

Health insurance

Job summary

Varda Space Industries in El Segundo, CA, seeks a Mission Software Engineer to own ground-segment services and mission-platform tooling. You will develop high‑reliability telemetry ingestion, distribution, and commanding, and deliver operator UI dashboards to streamline operations.

Collaborate across avionics, GNC, and mission ops, build simulations and test automation, and drive CI/CD pipelines, IaC, and deployment patterns for lab and flight environments.

Qualifications

• BS in CS, math, physics, engineering or equivalent safety-critical software experience.
• 5+ years in development of spacecraft or safety-critical software.
• Proficiency in Python and strong language fundamentals.
• 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. Ensure deterministic behavior for real-time operations and post-flight analysis.
• 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

CI/CD

Docker/Kubernetes

Real-time data

Observability

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or related

Tools

Git

Kubernetes

Job description

Varda Space Industries in El Segundo, CA, seeks a Mission Software Engineer to own ground-segment services and mission-platform tooling. You will develop high‑reliability telemetry ingestion, distribution, and commanding, and deliver operator UI dashboards to streamline operations.

Collaborate across avionics, GNC, and mission ops, build simulations and test automation, and drive CI/CD pipelines, IaC, and deployment patterns for lab and flight environments.