Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer - Live Ops

Emploive; El Segundo, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 169,000 - 216,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity incentives

Relocation support

Health insurance

401(k) match

Job summary

Varda Space Industries in El Segundo, CA, seeks a Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer to own the ground segment software and the platform it runs on, enabling spacecraft operations from telemetry to command. You will work hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops across lab, test range, and flight environments.

You will design high‑reliability services, CI/CD pipelines, and self‑service tooling to support scalable mission operations, testing, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering or equivalent technical experience in safety critical software.
• 5+ years in development of spacecraft or similar safety-critical software.
• Proficiency in Python and strong understanding of language concepts.
• 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. Ensure deterministic behavior for real-time operations and post-flight analysis.
• Mission Control Interfaces: Deliver operator-grade UIs and dashboards that optimize "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

Concurrency

Networking

CI/CD

Observability

Docker/Kubernetes

Real-time systems

Safety-critical software

Education

Bachelor’s in CS/Engineering

Tools

C++

Ansible

NiceGUI

Job description

Varda Space Industries in El Segundo, CA, seeks a Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer to own the ground segment software and the platform it runs on, enabling spacecraft operations from telemetry to command. You will work hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops across lab, test range, and flight environments.

You will design high‑reliability services, CI/CD pipelines, and self‑service tooling to support scalable mission operations, testing, and