Senior Product Systems Engineer

jobr.pro; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance

Flexible Time Off policy for vacation and sick leave

401(k) plan and equity options

Daily catered lunches and snacks in office

Job summary

Loft Orbital in San Francisco is seeking a Senior Product Systems Engineer to own the architecture of our space offering. You will shape system interactions, ensuring coherence across hardware, software, and ground operations. This role involves defining how our platform is structured and influencing how Loft’s offerings are built and scaled.

The ideal candidate should have a robust systems engineering background, strong communication skills, and the ability to coordinate diverse technical teams while navigating complex challenges.

Qualifications

• Strong systems engineering background in complex technical products spanning software and hardware.
• Experience working at the boundary between architecture definition, requirements structuring, and engineering implementation.
• Ability to structure complex systems into clear capabilities, interfaces, requirements, and responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Help define the general architecture of Loft’s offering across ground and space.
• Ensure the ground processing chain is defined and evolved as part of the offering.
• Coordinate architecture discussions and drive alignment between teams.

Skills

Systems engineering background

Experience with software-heavy systems

Strong communication skills

Ability to coordinate technical work

Job description

About this role

Loft Orbital builds a space infrastructure providing a fast & simple path to orbit. Using different flight proven buses, we design, integrate and operate spacecraft to fly physical or virtual customer payloads. We handle entire missions end-to-end, significantly reducing the lead‑time and risk of a traditional space mission.

As a Senior Product Systems Engineer at Loft, you will own the architecture of our overall offering — the layer that sits above any single implementation team and brings coherence across ground, space, software, and hardware. You will define how Loft's platform is structured, how capabilities are allocated across segments, and how customers, third‑party software, and Loft's own stack interact.

This is not a role about executing within a defined system. It is about shaping the system itself—making cross‑cutting architecture decisions, defining interfaces and requirements at the offering level, and ensuring the ground processing chain and customer‑facing tooling evolve in a way that is coherent, reusable, and product‑relevant. You will work closely with engineering, product, and operations teams across sites, and your work will directly influence how Loft's offering is built, exposed, and scaled.

Responsibilities

• Help define the general architecture of Loft’s offering across ground and space
• Support capability allocation across hardware, software, ground, flight, Loft-owned components, and external components
• Ensure the ground processing chain is defined and evolved as a coherent part of the offering
• Help shape ground software tools and interfaces as the main entry point for customers
• Clarify the interaction model between OBSW, ground software, customer software, third‑party software, and Loft’s stack
• Help define, organize, and maintain requirements, interfaces, and architectural boundaries for offering‑level topics
• Coordinate architecture discussions and drive alignment between product intent, system architecture, and implementation realities across teams
• Contribute to CONOPS, ICDs, architecture notes, trade studies, and related technical documentation
• Help ensure solutions are reusable, scalable, and understandable rather than tailored only to one mission
• Support architecture reviews and technical decision‑making on cross‑cutting topics

Must Haves

• Strong systems engineering background in complex technical products spanning software and hardware
• Experience working at the boundary between architecture definition, requirements structuring, and engineering implementation
• Ability to structure complex systems into clear capabilities, interfaces, requirements, and responsibilities
• Strong understanding of software‑heavy systems, including distributed components, APIs, processing chains, and integration patterns
• Ability to coordinate cross‑functional technical work across several teams without relying on direct authority
• Strong communication and documentation skills, including the ability to turn technical ambiguity into a clear framework for decisions and execution
• Sound engineering judgment on the right level of rigor, abstraction, and specification for a growing organization

Nice to Haves

• Experience with space systems, including ground segment tooling, onboard software, or customer‑facing technical platforms
• Experience defining integration models involving customer‑owned or third‑party software
• Experience with architecture trade studies, capability allocation, and system‑level interface management
• Familiarity with CONOPS, ICDs, and other architecture or interface documentation methods
• Experience with onboard data processing and cloud‑based ground software
• Experience in international and cross‑site engineering collaboration

Benefits

• 100% company‑paid medical, dental, and vision insurance option for employees and dependents
• Flexible Spending (FSA) and Health Savings (HSA) Accounts offered with an employer contribution to the HSA
• 100% employer paid Life, AD&D, Short‑Term, and Long‑Term Disability insurance
• Flexible Time Off policy for vacation and sick leave, and 12 paid holidays
• 401(k) plan and equity options
• Daily catered lunches and snacks in office
• International exposure to our team in France
• Fully paid parental leave; 14 weeks for birthing parent and 10 weeks for non‑birthing parent
• Carrot Fertility provides comprehensive, inclusive fertility healthcare and family‑forming benefits with financial support
• Off‑sites and many social events and celebrations
• Relocation assistance when applicable

Who We Are

Loft: Space Made Simple.

Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable, and simple way to deploy missions in orbit. We integrate, launch, and operate spacecraft, offering end‑to‑end missions as a service across Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on‑orbit AI, national security missions, and more. Leveraging our existing space infrastructure and an extensive inventory of satellite buses, Loft is reducing years‑long integration and launch timelines to months. With more than 30 missions flown, Loft’s flight heritage and proven technologies enable customers to focus on their mission objectives.

With a growing fleet on track to reach 30 satellites by 2027, we are scaling up quickly across our offices in San Francisco, CA | Golden, CO | and Toulouse, France to meet accelerating demand for space infrastructure.