Senior Ground-Segment Software Engineer, Spacecraft

Telemetry Today LLC; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 169,000 - 216,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Long-term cash awards

Job summary

Varda Space Industries in El Segundo, CA, is seeking a Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer to own ground segment services and the mission platform across telemetry, commanding, data acquisition, and flight software integration.

You will build operator-grade UIs, enable deterministic real-time operations, and collaborate with avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops. Strong Python, CI/CD and observability experience required; on-site in El Segundo with stock options.

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.
• 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 andmaintainhigh-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 thatoptimize"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

Real-time systems

CI/CD

Observability

Concurrency

Networking

Low-latency

Kubernetes

Testing/Simulation

Security-conscious

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering or equivalent technical experience in safety critical software

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Git

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Varda Space Industries in El Segundo, CA, is seeking a Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer to own ground segment services and the mission platform across telemetry, commanding, data acquisition, and flight software integration.

You will build operator-grade UIs, enable deterministic real-time operations, and collaborate with avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops. Strong Python, CI/CD and observability experience required; on-site in El Segundo with stock options.