Mission Ground Systems Engineer II: Real-Time Space Ops

Varda; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 144,000 - 184,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision insurance

Relocation assistance

Stock options

401(k)

Job summary

Varda in El Segundo, CA, is seeking a Mission Software Engineer II to own the ground segment software and the platform that enables spacecraft operations, including telemetry, commands, and data distribution.

You will work at the intersection of flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops, building reliable, scalable ground services and operator interfaces, with hands-on development across lab, test range, and mission environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering or equivalent.
• 3+ years in spacecraft or safety-critical software development.
• Expertise in Python and strong language fundamentals.
• Strong systems fundamentals: concurrency, networking, performance, reliability.
• Experience building real-time data acquisition and low-latency messaging.
• CI/CD, dependency/build systems, and infrastructure-as-code.
• End-to-end observability: logging, metrics, tracing.
• Docker and Kubernetes; release management and safe deployment.

Responsibilities

• Own Ground Segment Services: develop high-reliability telemetry ingestion, scaling, distribution and commanding.
• Mission Control Interfaces: deliver operator-grade UIs and dashboards that optimize ops time and reduce cognitive load.
• Simulation and Test Automation: build tools to run flight-software simulations, device emulators, and automated tests.
• Build the Mission Platform: design and productionize software for mission and ground teams; CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, test harnesses.
• Deployments Across Environments: create robust deployment patterns for labs, test stands, and mission networks.

Skills

Python

Real-time systems

CI/CD

Distributed systems

Networking

Observability

Docker

Kubernetes

Safety-critical software

Flight software collaboration

Education

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

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

NiceGUI

Ansible

Job description

Varda in El Segundo, CA, is seeking a Mission Software Engineer II to own the ground segment software and the platform that enables spacecraft operations, including telemetry, commands, and data distribution.

You will work at the intersection of flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops, building reliable, scalable ground services and operator interfaces, with hands-on development across lab, test range, and mission environments.