Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer — Real-Time Ground

Varda; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 131,000 - 184,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health & Wellness

Flexible PTO

100% company-paid Medical, Dental, and

Vision insurance

Stock options

Relocation support

EV charging

Job summary

Varda in El Segundo, CA, is hiring a Mission Software Engineer to own ground-segment services and operator-grade interfaces for spacecraft operations. You will work hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops.

The role emphasizes real-time data acquisition, telemetry distribution, CI/CD pipelines, and observability, using Python, Docker/Kubernetes, and safety-critical practices. On-site role with strong compensation.

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.
• Expertise with Python; strong systems fundamentals: concurrency, networking, performance, reliability.
• Experience building real-time data acquisition, scaling, and distribution services with low-latency messaging.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD, dependency/build systems, and infrastructure-as-code.
• End-to-end observability: logging, metrics, tracing; Docker/Kubernetes; release management and rollout readiness.

Responsibilities

• Own Ground Segment Services: develop and maintain high-reliability telemetry ingestion, scaling, distribution, and commanding.
• Mission Control Interfaces: deliver operator-grade UIs and dashboards to optimise ops time and reduce cognitive load.
• Simulation and Test Automation: build tools for flight-software simulations and device emulators for avionics and ops.
• Build the Mission Platform: design and productionize software with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code.
• Deployments Across Environments: create robust deployment patterns for lab benches, test stands, and mission networks.

Skills

Python

Real-time systems

CI/CD

Docker/Kubernetes

Observability

Networking

Safety-critical software

C++

Education

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

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Ansible

NiceGUI

Job description

Varda in El Segundo, CA, is hiring a Mission Software Engineer to own ground-segment services and operator-grade interfaces for spacecraft operations. You will work hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission ops.

The role emphasizes real-time data acquisition, telemetry distribution, CI/CD pipelines, and observability, using Python, Docker/Kubernetes, and safety-critical practices. On-site role with strong compensation.