Senior Ground Software Architect – Space Systems

Rocket Lab USA; Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 225,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Top tier medical

Dental and vision

Paid vacation and sick leave

401(k) with company match

Employee stock purchase program

Job summary

Rocket Lab USA is seeking a Senior Ground Software Engineer II to shape ground software architecture for space missions from our Long Beach, CA headquarters. You’ll work with flight software, mission operations, and systems engineering to deliver scalable ground systems and mission-ready software for Rocket Lab Space Systems programs.

The role emphasizes end-to-end system design, reliability, and cross-team collaboration, with leadership responsibilities and visibility to executives and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or other technical discipline.
• 8+ years of relevant software development experience.
• Proven track record architecting web-based software systems at scale.
• Strong systems-level thinking with trade-off analysis across performance, security, maintainability.
• U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain/maintain clearance.

Responsibilities

• Own major parts of architecture and evolve ground software platforms.
• Partner with flight software, mission operations, and systems engineers to translate needs into scalable designs.
• Deploy, configure, and optimize the Ground Data System for diverse missions.
• Establish monitoring, alerting, and reliability frameworks for issue detection.
• Provide architectural guidance to ensure resilience and maintainability.
• Serve as trusted advisor to leadership on ground software strategy.

Skills

Systems thinking

End-to-end system design

Leadership

Security awareness

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering or other technical discipline

Tools

Python

Golang

Rust

TypeScript

Angular

InfluxDB

PostgreSQL

Playwright

FastAPI

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Git

OAuth

Job description

Rocket Lab USA is seeking a Senior Ground Software Engineer II to shape ground software architecture for space missions from our Long Beach, CA headquarters. You’ll work with flight software, mission operations, and systems engineering to deliver scalable ground systems and mission-ready software for Rocket Lab Space Systems programs.

The role emphasizes end-to-end system design, reliability, and cross-team collaboration, with leadership responsibilities and visibility to executives and