Senior Spacecraft Ground-Segment & Mission Control Engineer

Varda Space Industries, Inc.; El Segundo (CA); Hybrid; USD 169,000 - 216,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

Stock options

401(k) retirement plan with employer 6

Wellness reimbursement

Job summary

Varda Space Industries, Inc. in El Segundo, CA, is seeking a Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer to own the ground segment software and the platform it runs on, enabling spacecraft operations across telemetry, commanding, data distribution, and mission control interfaces.

You will work hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops, building reliable CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and self-service tooling to support lab, test range, and on-orbit

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 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 across phases.
• 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; standardize CI/CD pipelines and IaC.
• Deployments Across Environments: Create robust deployment patterns for lab benches, test stands, and mission networks.

Skills

Python

Concurrency

Networking

Real-time systems

Observability

CI/CD

End-to-end testing

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering or equivalent

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Varda Space Industries, Inc. in El Segundo, CA, is seeking a Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer to own the ground segment software and the platform it runs on, enabling spacecraft operations across telemetry, commanding, data distribution, and mission control interfaces.

You will work hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops, building reliable CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and self-service tooling to support lab, test range, and on-orbit