Spacecraft Ground Systems Engineer: Real-Time Ops & UI

Varda Space Industries, Inc.; El Segundo (CA); Hybrid; USD 131,000 - 184,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Relocation support

Fully stocked kitchen

Job summary

Varda Space Industries, Inc. in El Segundo, CA is seeking a Spacecraft Software Engineer focused on ground systems. You will own telemetry ingestion, distribution, and commanding services and build operator-grade dashboards for mission control.

Join a space-startup culture with exposure to CI/CD pipelines, real-time data processing, and robust testing frameworks. This on-site role emphasizes reliability, observability, and scalable ground software across labs and mission networks.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering or equivalent technical experience in safety critical software.
• 3+ years of experience in the development of spacecraft or similar safety critical software.
• Experience with Python and 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 infrastructure-as-code.
• Deployments Across Environments: Create robust deployment patterns for lab benches, test stands, and mission networks with safe rollout/rollback strategies.

Skills

Python

Concurrency

Networking

CI/CD

Observability

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in relevant field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Ansible

NiceGUI

Job description

Varda Space Industries, Inc. in El Segundo, CA is seeking a Spacecraft Software Engineer focused on ground systems. You will own telemetry ingestion, distribution, and commanding services and build operator-grade dashboards for mission control.

Join a space-startup culture with exposure to CI/CD pipelines, real-time data processing, and robust testing frameworks. This on-site role emphasizes reliability, observability, and scalable ground software across labs and mission networks.