Senior Ground Segment Software Engineer – Space Missions

Front Door Defense; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 169,000 - 216,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) match

Relocation support

Wellness reimbursement

Job summary

Varda Space Industries is seeking a Senior Space Mission Software Engineer to own the ground segment software platform for spacecraft operations in El Segundo, CA. You will develop high‑reliability telemetry ingestion, distribution, and commanding services and contribute to mission control UIs and testing automation.

You will collaborate across flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops to design and productionize scalable solutions with CI/CD pipelines and observability,

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.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD, dependency/build systems, and infrastructure-as-code.
• End-to-end observability experience: logging, metrics, tracing.

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 with self-service tooling.
• Deployments Across Environments: Create robust deployment patterns for lab benches, test stands, and mission networks.

Skills

Concurrency

Networking

Real-time data processing

Observability

Education

Bachelor's degree (CS/Math/Physics/Engineering)

Tools

Python

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Job description

Varda Space Industries is seeking a Senior Space Mission Software Engineer to own the ground segment software platform for spacecraft operations in El Segundo, CA. You will develop high‑reliability telemetry ingestion, distribution, and commanding services and contribute to mission control UIs and testing automation.

You will collaborate across flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops to design and productionize scalable solutions with CI/CD pipelines and observability,