Ground Software Engineer II

Rocket Lab Corporation•Littleton, CO

8h•$93,000 - $128,000•Onsite

About The Position

Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company that builds rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems. Its Space Systems team develops spacecraft, payloads, and components for missions including interplanetary exploration, in-space manufacturing, and national security and defense. The team has enabled more than 1,700 missions and has worked with organizations including NASA, the Space Development Agency, and the U.S. Space Force. Based at Rocket Lab’s Littleton, Colorado site, the Ground Software Engineer II serves as a technical authority for spacecraft ground software across Space Systems missions. The engineer helps define and evolve the end-to-end architecture of ground systems to support scalability, reliability, and mission success for internal teams and external customers. The position has high visibility, with deliverables supporting internal leadership, the board of directors, and investors. The role owns and evolves significant parts of Rocket Lab’s web-based ground software platforms, collaborates with flight software developers, mission operations personnel, and systems engineers to design scalable ground systems, and deploys and optimizes the Rocket Lab Ground Data System for varied mission profiles. It also establishes monitoring, alerting, and reliability practices, provides architectural guidance for mission resilience and maintainability, and advises leadership on strategy, risks, and emerging technologies.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in engineering or another technical discipline.
At least 2 years of relevant professional software development experience.
Experience architecting web-based software systems at scale.
U.S. citizenship is required due to program requirements.
Active Secret clearance or the ability to obtain and maintain one.

Nice To Haves

Active Top Secret clearance.
Systems-level thinking and the ability to balance technical trade-offs involving performance, security, and maintainability.
Full-stack development experience, including backend technologies such as Python, Golang, and/or Rust; frontend technologies such as TypeScript and Angular; and databases such as InfluxDB, PostgreSQL, or equivalent.
Experience with end-to-end testing frameworks such as Playwright.
Aerospace background supporting satellite, spacecraft, constellation, or launch vehicle ground or mission operations.
Experience designing with Python web frameworks such as FastAPI or equivalent.
Deep knowledge of microservice architectures and distributed systems.
Demonstrated leadership in end-to-end system design and delivery with engineering teams.
Ability to produce clear, well-structured, well-documented software designs.
Familiarity with database architecture, schema design, and optimization.
Expertise in Git-based workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and Kubernetes orchestration.
Understanding of modern authentication and authorization frameworks such as OAuth.
Knowledge of CCSDS standards, including Space Packet Protocol, COP-1, and CFD.

Responsibilities

Own major parts of the architecture and evolve Rocket Lab’s web-based ground software platforms for spacecraft operations.
Work with flight software developers, mission operations personnel, and systems engineers to translate mission needs into scalable ground system designs.
Deploy, configure, and optimize the Rocket Lab Ground Data System for diverse mission profiles.
Establish monitoring, alerting, and reliability frameworks to detect and mitigate issues proactively.
Provide technical direction and architectural guidance to support mission resilience, system integration, and long-term maintainability.
Advise leadership on ground software strategy, risk areas, and emerging technologies.