Onboard Software Engineer: Core Services for Spaceflight

Loftorbital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

FSA/HSA

Life & Disability Insurance

Flexible Time Off

Equity Options

Daily Lunches

International exposure

Parental Leave

Fertility Benefits

Off-sites

Relocation Assistance

Job summary

Loft is seeking an experienced software engineer to contribute to onboard software powering space missions. You will design, implement, and refine high‑reliability code in C/C++ with Python support, participate in reviews, and help shape the architecture with a strong ownership mindset.

You'll work with Git, CI tools, and modern build systems, collaborating across teams, and may occasionally support operation of satellites in orbit as part of a multidisciplinary team.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of software engineering experience with C/C++ and Python.
• Experience with version control systems (Git).
• Experience with CI tools (GitLab-CI, Jenkins) and build systems (Make, CMake).
• Understanding of distributed architectures and networking concepts.
• Experience in multi-threaded development and embedded Linux environments (Yocto).
• Familiarity with unit test frameworks and middleware (gRPC, ZMQ/NATS).
• Experience with containerization (Docker, K3S) and related tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and refine onboard software with ownership, driving features end-to-end.
• Review code and enforce standards to maintain quality across the codebase.
• Design and implement unit tests for self-authored and peer-authored code.
• Utilize version control to create feature branches, push code, and merge into production.
• Contribute to onboard software architecture via design proposals and reviews.
• Improve software development processes and design standards.
• Coordinate with downstream teams on release, distribution, and adoption of latest releases.
• Opportunity to directly participate in operating our on-orbit fleet of satellites.

Skills

C/C++ (C++11+)

Python

Git

CI/CD (GitLab CI, Jenkins)

Make / CMake

Multithreading

Networking UDP/TCP/IP

Distributed architecture

Embedded Linux / Yocto

Unit testing frameworks

Docker / Kubernetes

Tools

Git

GitLab CI

Jenkins

Make

CMake

Docker

K3s

systemd-nspawn

Yocto

Googletest

pytest

Robot/Cucumber

Job description

Loft is seeking an experienced software engineer to contribute to onboard software powering space missions. You will design, implement, and refine high‑reliability code in C/C++ with Python support, participate in reviews, and help shape the architecture with a strong ownership mindset.

You'll work with Git, CI tools, and modern build systems, collaborating across teams, and may occasionally support operation of satellites in orbit as part of a multidisciplinary team.