Backend Software Engineer - Mission Planning Strategy

Loft Orbital Solutions•Golden, CO

1d•$140,000 - $190,000

About The Position

Loft Orbital is seeking a Backend Software Engineer to join its Mission Platform organization. The role involves developing and improving a new software product that manages customer orders across a heterogeneous, multi-sensor satellite constellation. The product is intended to scale to 50+ satellites and hundreds of thousands of customer tasking orders. The engineer will help design customer-facing interfaces and the back-end pipeline from mission planning through onboard execution. The role also includes building tools and services to help sales teams and operators understand current and future capacity, operational risks, and opportunities for growth. The engineer will address complex, multi-objective optimization and scheduling problems, balancing competing customer constraints while helping define optimal outcomes. The position requires designing systems of systems: decomposing complex problems into well-bounded services with clear interfaces, and reasoning about how those services interact, fail, and scale. Work may span astrodynamics, satellite capacity modeling and simulation, back-end/API performance, low-latency system design, and mathematical optimization. The successful candidate is expected to work independently in a fast-paced environment, solve complex system-level problems, and challenge requirements.

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 back-end/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.
Help design customer-facing interfaces and the back-end pipeline from mission planning to onboard execution.
Build tools and services that help sales teams and operators understand current and future capacity, operational risks, and growth opportunities.
Solve 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.
Reason about how services interact, fail, and scale together.

Benefits

100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance option 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 disability, and long-term disability insurance.
Flexible Time Off policy for vacation and sick leave, and 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 fertility healthcare and family-forming support with financial assistance.
Off-sites, social events, and celebrations.
Relocation assistance when applicable.