Ground Systems Software Engineer

Elveo•Chantilly, VA

About The Position

Elveo is seeking an experienced Software Engineer to join its Mission Operations team, focused on the ground segment of its satellite constellation. The role designs, builds, ships, and operates backend services, APIs, and automation connecting Elveo’s global ground station network to the Mission Operations Software platform used to command, monitor, and fly the constellation. It is primarily a software development position involving Python microservices, web dashboards, event-driven messaging, and hybrid AWS/on-prem infrastructure. The engineer will own services end to end, from API and data-model design through implementation, testing, code review, CI/CD, and production operations. The role also contributes to a cloud-native, event-driven Mission Operations platform on AWS and integrates ground station equipment. Because the software interfaces with satellites and RF ground stations, the work includes Linux systems, networking, and hardware interfaces, in collaboration with flight software, telecom, and ground site engineers. During the first year, the engineer is expected to contribute production code early, take ownership of backend services, develop an understanding of ground-segment operations, improve testing, deployment repeatability, and observability, contribute to the next-generation architecture, and become a trusted technical contact for troubleshooting and anomaly investigation. The position is located in Chantilly, Virginia.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
At least 5 years of professional experience developing production software, preferably in Python; experience should involve services, APIs, or applications rather than primarily scripts.
Experience owning a production service or system, including designing, shipping, operating, and debugging it.
Experience designing and consuming REST APIs and working with relational databases.
Experience with modern development practices, including version control workflows, code review, automated testing, and CI/CD.
Strong working knowledge of Linux environments.
Working knowledge of networking concepts such as TCP/IP, DNS, VPNs, and firewalls, sufficient to build and debug networked services.
Ability to troubleshoot systems spanning software, networks, and hardware interfaces.
Strong documentation habits, including architecture documentation and technical decision records.
Interest in satellite operations, ground systems, mission operations, telecommunications, or space systems.
To comply with ITAR requirements, applicants must be a U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee, or be eligible to obtain the necessary authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Nice To Haves

Experience building event-driven or message-based distributed systems, such as MQTT, Kafka, or SQS/SNS.
Experience with AWS services and cloud-native architecture, such as API Gateway, Cognito, Lambda, ECS/EKS, or CloudWatch.
Experience with FastAPI or similar Python web frameworks, and frontend experience with React or Vue.
Experience with infrastructure as code, such as Terraform or Ansible, and hybrid cloud/on-prem environments.
Experience with observability tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, or ELK/OpenSearch.
Experience with Rust.
Experience with satellite ground systems, mission operations software, RF ground equipment, or telemetry systems.
Experience supporting high-availability operational systems, or working in a startup, satellite/telecom operator, or mission operations environment.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, test, and maintain backend services for satellite contact scheduling, spacecraft command preparation and transmission, telemetry ingestion and processing, and ground station configuration.
Build and evolve REST APIs and event-driven integrations, including MQTT and message queues, between ground stations, network services, and Mission Operations tools.
Write production-quality Python and contribute to shared libraries, service patterns, and developer tooling.
Contribute to React and Vue dashboards and operator-facing tools for visualizing telemetry, contact schedules, and system health.
Participate in merge request reviews, automated testing, GitLab CI/CD, architecture decision records, and AI-augmented development workflows.
Help design and implement the next-generation cloud-native Mission Operations platform on AWS, including event-driven services, managed API gateways and identity, serverless and container workloads, and observability.
Migrate existing services incrementally from the hybrid environment without disrupting live constellation operations.
Develop software interfaces for integrating new and upgraded ground stations, including network equipment, modems, and RF systems.
Automate ground station deployment, configuration, monitoring, and recovery using infrastructure as code.
Improve ground-segment observability through telemetry pipelines, dashboards, alerting, logging, and metrics.
Troubleshoot issues spanning software, networks, and hardware interfaces, and provide occasional on-call support for mission-critical operations.
Take ownership of backend services, learn ground-segment operations, improve test coverage and deployment repeatability, contribute to pilot services for the next-generation architecture, and support anomaly investigations.