Senior Software Engineer - Ground & Mission Systems

Star Catcher; Jacksonville (FL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive benefits package

401(k) plan

Life insurance

Paid parental leave

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Job summary

Star Catcher seeks a Senior Software Engineer to lead the ground and mission systems software for space-to-space energy beaming and the orbital power grid. You will own the full software lifecycle, from requirements flow-down through design, integration, testing, and production support, aligning ground tooling with embedded software teams.

You will architect real-time telemetry pipelines, define command planning workflows, and help establish scalable CI/CD with containerization and modern

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 10+ years of professional experience building production software systems with ownership of architecture.
• Proficiency in Python, C++, Go or similar languages.
• Experience with relational and time-series databases, REST/gRPC APIs, and microservices.
• Experience with distributed systems design and software architecture.

Responsibilities

• Lead ground segment software architecture and co-own flight/ground interfaces.
• Own full software lifecycle for ground and mission systems from design to fielded product support.
• Architect telemetry ingestion, processing, storage pipelines, and alerting for spacecraft health.

Skills

Python

C++

Go

REST APIs

Distributed systems

CI/CD

Git

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE or related

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Kafka

Prometheus

Grafana

ELK/OpenSearch

Git

Job description

Senior Software Engineer - Ground & Mission Systems

Power the future of Space at Star Catcher

Star Catcher is building the first energy grid in space to power the orbital economy.

Today’s spacecraft must generate all of their own power, which caps what they can do and how long they can operate. But what if they could “plug” into a grid, the way buildings do on Earth? Instead of cables and outlets, Star Catcher is building the technology to wirelessly beam energy to spacecraft’s existing solar panels when and where they need it.
Be an early member of a team building an entirely new energy infrastructure at scale to power the next frontier.

Star Catcher Industries, Inc., located in Jacksonville, Florida, has an opportunity for a Senior Software Engineer - Ground & Mission Systems to support the development of space-to-space power beaming spacecraft and the Star Catcher Network, its orbital power grid.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead ground segment software architecture and co-own flight/ground interfaces, including telemetry visualization, command planning, and data processing pipelines for mission operations.
• Lead full software development lifecycle execution for ground and mission systems, including requirements flow-down, design, hardware/software integration and test, verification, transition to production, and fielded product support.
• Architect real-time and near-real-time telemetry ingestion, processing, and storage pipelines, including frame/packet decommutation, time-series storage, and limit-checking/alerting for spacecraft health and status.
• Define command planning, sequencing, and validation workflows, ensuring safe command uplink and interfacing with ground station scheduling and pass-planning systems.
• Define interfaces between ground tooling and spacecraft systems alongside embedded/flight software and electrical engineering teams, including telemetry/command dictionaries and interface control documents.
• Set standards for ground software architecture, APIs, service-oriented design, and CI/CD practices, including containerization and deployment strategy.
• Establish observability practices (logging, metrics, alerting) for ground and mission systems to support on‑call operations.
• Mentor ground/mission systems engineers and lead design reviews.
• Support internal software architecture and code quality practices across ground and non‑embedded systems.

Basic Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Experience: 10+ years of professional experience building production software systems (services, APIs, data pipelines, or engineering tooling), with demonstrated experience owning system architecture.
• Proficiency in one or more of Python, C++, Go, or similar languages.
• Experience with databases (relational and time-series), REST/gRPC APIs, and service-oriented/microservices architecture.
• Experience with distributed systems design, software/computer architecture, and structured workflow tools supporting requirements management, configuration management, and change control.

Technical Expertise

• Experience with telemetry and command processing standards (e.g., CCSDS, XTCE, or similar) and real-time data streaming (e.g., message queues or pub/sub systems such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ).
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) and infrastructure-as‑code for deployment of ground software.
• Experience with observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch) for monitoring mission‑critical ground systems.
• Familiarity with mission operations concepts, including pass scheduling, command sequencing, and anomaly/limit monitoring.
• Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure, or GovCloud equivalents) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Working knowledge of Git and collaborative software development workflows

Desired Skills

• Experience with mission operations, ground segment, or telemetry/command systems for spacecraft or other real‑time platforms.
• Experience integrating software with hardware test benches or lab equipment.
• Experience with network storage systems, Gigabit Ethernet, or InfiniBand.
• Working knowledge of authentication and access‑control schemes (e.g., RADIUS, LDAP).
• Experience with embedded security and encryption for data and command protection.
• DevSecOps and test automation experience using Python or similar languages.
• Familiarity with Linux development environments and tooling.
• Experience in a fast‑paced startup or early‑stage engineering environment.
• Experience mentoring engineers or establishing team‑wide software standards.

Help us deploy and scale space infrastructure that will drive our utilization of space forward! We offer a highly competitive benefits package including access to comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement plan, life insurance, and paid parental leave, in addition to other benefits.

Star Catcher is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Star Catcher is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

All offers of employment at Star Catcher are contingent upon results of a thorough background check and your ability to provide proof of eligibility to work in the US.

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.