Senior Ground-Segment Software Engineer for Space Missions

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

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO

Medical, Dental, Vision insurance

Wellness reimbursement

Parental leave

One Medical memberships

Equity incentives

401(k) with 6% match

Cell phone reimbursement

Relocation support

EV charging

Job summary

Varda Space Industries seeks a Senior Mission Software Engineer to own the ground segment software and its platform, enabling spacecraft operations from telemetry to control. You will work on real-time data handling, CI/CD automation, and observable systems across lab, test range, and mission networks.

You’ll collaborate with flight software, avionics, and ground teams to build scalable telemetry ingestion, dashboards, and test automation, while advancing CI/CD, IaC, and secure deployments in a

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering or equivalent technical experience in safety critical software.
• 5+ 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.
• 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.
• 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 scenario-based automated tests.
• Build the Mission Platform: Design, implement, and productionize software for mission and ground software teams; standardize CI/CD pipelines and IaC.
• Deployments Across Environments: Create robust deployment patterns for lab benches, test stands, and mission networks; safe rollout/rollback strategies.

Skills

Python

Concurrency

Networking

Real-time data acquisition

CI/CD

Observability

Docker/Kubernetes

Release management

Infrastructure as code

Education

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

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Ansible

NiceGUI

Job description

Varda Space Industries seeks a Senior Mission Software Engineer to own the ground segment software and its platform, enabling spacecraft operations from telemetry to control. You will work on real-time data handling, CI/CD automation, and observable systems across lab, test range, and mission networks.

You’ll collaborate with flight software, avionics, and ground teams to build scalable telemetry ingestion, dashboards, and test automation, while advancing CI/CD, IaC, and secure deployments in a