Onboard Linux & Container Engineer for Orbit

Loft Orbital; Golden (CO); On-site; USD 144,000 - 198,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/dental/vision insurance

Relocation assistance

401(k) plan with equity options

Daily catered lunches

FlexTime Off & holidays

Job summary

Loft Orbital is seeking an engineer to own and evolve onboard software for our satellite fleet. You will work across Linux internals, container runtimes, and CI pipelines to package, deploy, and execute software onboard, ensuring reliability in orbit and scalable deployment as new satellites come online.

You will contribute to bundle management, runtime container environment, and planetary-scale validation, with ownership from concept through delivery.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, or similar runtimes).
• Deep Linux system knowledge: boot process, service management, filesystem layout, and failure recovery.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitLab-CI, Jenkins, or similar).
• Proficiency with Git and collaborative development workflows.
• Experience with embedded or resource-constrained systems.
• Working Python.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to and evolve our bundle management tool — the tool that resolves package dependencies, assembles mission-specific software stacks, and enables the Solutions team to spin up and maintain an ever-growing number of satellite programs
• Develop and harden our onboard Linux infrastructure: how services are deployed on the rootfs, what system manages their execution, and how we ensure reliable and recoverable Linux operation in orbit
• Evolve our Runtime Container Environment — the container manager and the full stack around it (base images, container registry service) — enabling partner and customer workloads to run securely onboard our vehicles
• Support scaling of the deployment pipeline as new hardware platforms are added and the number of active satellite programs grows
• Contribute to Product Validation — as the last step in the development pipeline, the team plays a key role in validating software readiness before it goes to orbit
• Design, implement, and refine software with a high degree of ownership, driving features from concept through delivery
• Participate in code reviews, design proposals, and the continuous improvement of development processes

Skills

Containerization

Linux

CI/CD

Git

Embedded systems

Python

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

GitLab CI

Jenkins

Job description

Loft Orbital is seeking an engineer to own and evolve onboard software for our satellite fleet. You will work across Linux internals, container runtimes, and CI pipelines to package, deploy, and execute software onboard, ensuring reliability in orbit and scalable deployment as new satellites come online.

You will contribute to bundle management, runtime container environment, and planetary-scale validation, with ownership from concept through delivery.