Backend Software Engineer - Mission Planning Strategy
About The Position
Loft Orbital is hiring a Backend Software Engineer for its Mission Platform organization. The role involves developing and improving a new product that manages customer orders across a multi-sensor satellite constellation, designed to scale to 50+ satellites and hundreds of thousands of customer tasking orders. The engineer will help build the product from scratch and address challenges involving astrodynamics, satellite capacity modeling and simulation, backend and API performance, low-latency system design, and mathematical optimization and scheduling. The position works with teams to design customer-facing interfaces and the backend pipeline from planning through onboard execution. It also involves building tools and services that help sales teams and operators understand capacity, operational risks, and growth opportunities. The engineer will solve multi-objective optimization problems and design systems of systems by decomposing complex problems into well-bounded services with clear interfaces, while considering how those services interact, fail, and scale. Loft Orbital provides end-to-end missions as a service, integrating, launching, and operating spacecraft for governments, companies, and research institutions. The company was founded in 2017 and has offices in San Francisco, Golden, and Toulouse.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering, Physics/Astrodynamics, Mathematics, or a related field.
- At least 2 years of experience designing and developing software libraries and backend services, preferably in Python.
- Proven ability to operate independently and solve complex problems.
- Experience with system design.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences.
Nice To Haves
- Master's degree in Software Engineering, Physics/Astrodynamics, Mathematics, or a related field.
- At least 5 years of experience designing and developing software libraries and backend services, preferably in Python.
- Proficiency with Django/GraphQL stacks.
- Hands-on experience operating spacecraft.
- Experience with C++ or high-performance Python, including vectorization, JIT compilation such as Numba, or GPU parallelization.
- Practical experience building high-performance backend software applications and/or libraries.
- Specialization in integer, linear, or multi-objective optimization, or other Operations Research-style problems.
- Specialization in backend/API performance optimization.
- Specialization in distributed systems.
- Specialization in security.
- Specialization in Earth observation tasking.
- Specialization in high-performance computing.
Responsibilities
- Develop and improve a software product that manages customer orders across a multi-sensor satellite constellation.
- Collaborate with teams to design customer-facing interfaces and the backend pipeline from planning to onboard execution.
- Build tools and services that help sales teams and operators understand current and future capacity, operational risks, and opportunities for growth.
- Solve complex multi-objective optimization problems to maximize collection capacity while balancing conflicting customer constraints, and help define what optimal means.
- Design systems of systems by decomposing complex problems into well-bounded services with clear interfaces, and reason about how the services interact, fail, and scale.
- Build and optimize a product from scratch to support a large satellite constellation and high volumes of customer tasking orders.
Benefits
- 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance options for employees and dependents.
- Flexible Spending Accounts and Health Savings Accounts, with an employer contribution to the HSA.
- 100% employer-paid Life, AD&D, Short-Term, and Long-Term Disability insurance.
- Flexible Time Off for vacation and sick leave, plus 12 paid holidays.
- 401(k) plan and equity options.
- Daily catered lunches and snacks.
- International exposure to the team in France.
- Fully paid parental leave: 14 weeks for primary caregivers and 10 weeks for secondary caregivers.
- Carrot Fertility benefits, including financial support for fertility healthcare and family-forming.
- Off-sites, social events, and celebrations.
- Relocation assistance when applicable.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
