Mission Software Engineer II, Ground Systems for Space

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

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO and 12 paid holidays

100% company-paid medical, dental, and

Vision insurance

Voluntary insurance options

Wellness reimbursement

Parental leave

Relocation assistance

Job summary

Varda Space Industries in El Segundo, CA, is hiring a Mission Software Engineer II to own the ground segment software and the platform enabling spacecraft operations. You will work at the intersection of telemetry and commanding, data acquisition, distribution, and mission control interfaces, delivering reliable flight-software tooling.

This role requires expertise in Python, real-time systems, CI/CD, and observability, plus hands-on experience with Docker/Kubernetes and safety-critical software

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.
• Have 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

Concurrency

Networking

Real-time data

CI/CD

Docker/Kubernetes

Observability

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Ansible

NiceGUI

Job description

Varda Space Industries in El Segundo, CA, is hiring a Mission Software Engineer II to own the ground segment software and the platform enabling spacecraft operations. You will work at the intersection of telemetry and commanding, data acquisition, distribution, and mission control interfaces, delivering reliable flight-software tooling.

This role requires expertise in Python, real-time systems, CI/CD, and observability, plus hands-on experience with Docker/Kubernetes and safety-critical software