Ground Systems Software Engineer

Lynk•Chantilly, VA

27d•Onsite

About The Position

Lynk is looking for an experienced Software Engineer to join the Mission Operations team, focused on the ground segment of our satellite constellation. You will design, build, and ship the backend services, APIs, and automation that connect Lynk's global ground station network to our Mission Operations Software — the platform our operators use to command, monitor, and fly the constellation every day. This is first and foremost a software development role. Our Mission Operations Software is a growing platform of Python microservices (FastAPI) with web dashboards (React and Vue), event-driven messaging (MQTT), and hybrid AWS/on-prem infrastructure managed as code. You will own services end to end: designing APIs and data models, writing well-tested code, reviewing your teammates' merge requests, running CI/CD pipelines, and operating what you ship. You will also help build the next generation of this platform as we move toward a cloud-native, event-driven architecture on AWS. Because the software commands real satellites through real RF ground stations, the role also touches Linux systems, networking, and ground station hardware interfaces. You don't need to be an RF engineer, but you should enjoy writing software whose bugs and successes show up in the physical world, and working closely with the flight software, telecom, and ground site engineers who live there.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years of professional experience developing production software — services, APIs, or applications, not primarily scripts — preferably in Python.
Experience owning a service or system in production: designing it, shipping it, operating it, and debugging it when it breaks.
Experience designing and consuming REST APIs and working with relational databases.
Experience with modern development practices: version control workflows, code review, automated testing, and CI/CD.
Strong working knowledge of Linux environments.
Working knowledge of networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, VPNs, firewalls) sufficient to build and debug networked services.
Ability to troubleshoot systems that span 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.
U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident (green card holder), refugee, or asylee, or eligible to obtain necessary authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Nice To Haves

Experience building event-driven or message-based distributed systems (MQTT, Kafka, SQS/SNS, or similar).
Experience with AWS services and cloud-native architecture (API Gateway, Cognito, Lambda, ECS/EKS, CloudWatch).
Experience with FastAPI or similar Python web frameworks; frontend experience with React or Vue.
Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible) and hybrid cloud/on-prem environments.
Experience with observability tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, 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 that schedule satellite contacts, prepare and transmit spacecraft commands, ingest and process telemetry, and manage ground station configuration.
Build and evolve REST APIs and event-driven integrations (MQTT, message queues) between ground stations, network services, and Mission Operations tools.
Write production-quality Python; contribute to shared libraries, service patterns, and developer tooling used across the Mission Operations codebase.
Contribute to web dashboards and operator-facing tools (React/Vue) that visualize telemetry, contact schedules, and system health.
Participate fully in the team's engineering practices: merge request reviews, automated testing, GitLab CI/CD, architecture decision records, and AI-augmented development workflows.
Help design and implement Lynk's next-generation, cloud-native Mission Operations platform on AWS — event-driven services, managed API gateways and identity (Amazon API Gateway, Cognito), serverless and container workloads, and first-class observability.
Migrate existing services incrementally from today's hybrid environment without disrupting live constellation operations.
Develop the software interfaces that integrate new and upgraded ground stations — network equipment, modems, RF systems — into the operational environment.
Automate ground station deployment, configuration, monitoring, and recovery using infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible).
Improve observability across the ground segment: telemetry pipelines, dashboards, alerting, logging, and metrics.
Troubleshoot issues that span software, networks, and hardware interfaces; provide occasional on-call support for mission-critical operations.