Navigation Engineer (Ground Software)

Logos Space•Mountain View, CA

1d•$190,000 - $250,000

About The Position

Logos Space is building a proliferated Low Earth Orbit (pLEO) constellation to deliver resilient, high-performance connectivity to enterprise and government users worldwide. As part of that effort, the Navigation team is designing and building the software and infrastructure for spacecraft timing, astrodynamics, maneuver planning, orbit determination, and related navigation workflows used across flight and ground systems. The Navigation team at Logos Space is building the Ground Navigation Software (GNS) stack used to generate, screen, replan, validate, approve, release, and track navigation products for our proliferated LEO constellation. This role focuses on the operational software that stitches together orbit determination, orbit propagation, event prediction, maneuver planning, conjunction screening, replanning, validation gates, product repositories, configuration management, and operational data flows into repeatable per-spacecraft workflows. In this role, you will help build the software backbone that turns navigation algorithms, reference data, spacecraft telemetry, external data products, and operational procedures into a production-grade ground system. The work spans backend services, workflow orchestration, databases, product repositories, run-state management, provenance tracking, validation gates, operator tooling, APIs, automated retries, observability, CI/CD, and deployment infrastructure. In this role, you will develop the software that makes the ground navigation system operational: scheduling product runs, managing inputs, executing applications, tracking outputs, validating products, preserving audit history, handling replans, and releasing approved products to downstream consumers. You will work closely with astrodynamics, state estimation, maneuver planning, conjunction assessment, flight software, mission operations, ground software, and systems engineering teams to define clean interfaces and reliable operational workflows. We are looking for engineers who can work well in a fast-paced environment, turn incomplete requirements into practical operational software, and build reliable ground infrastructure that enables constellation-scale navigation operations.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related STEM field, or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years of relevant professional experience building ground software, backend services, operational software, workflow orchestration systems, event-driven architectures, data platforms, mission operations software, or other high-reliability engineering software.
Proficiency in Python, modern C++, or another production backend software language.
Experience working with structured data products, metadata, configuration data, time-series data, telemetry, logs, or engineering artifacts.
Experience with production containerized development and deployment workflows using Docker, Kubernetes, or equivalent tools.
Experience building, testing, and debugging microservice software systems in local, CI/CD, and integration-test environments.
Experience with Linux-based development environments, Git, automated testing, CI/CD, and modern software delivery workflows.
Working knowledge of distributed systems fundamentals, including service interfaces, failure handling, retries, idempotency, observability, and data consistency.
Ability to work across software, operations, and domain engineering teams to turn operational concepts into reliable production workflows.
Experience with production service observability, including metrics, logs, traces, alerting, dashboards, health checks, and operational runbooks.
Experience building operator-facing dashboards, review tools, internal web applications, or operational displays.
Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Nice To Haves

8+ years of relevant experience and the ability to independently own technical workstreams.
Experience building spacecraft ground software systems, mission operations software, flight dynamics systems, constellation operations tools, or other operational aerospace software.
Experience with navigation, flight dynamics, orbit determination, orbit propagation, maneuver planning, conjunction screening, mission planning, or spacecraft operations workflows.
Experience designing product repositories, provenance systems, approval workflows, release gates, configuration management systems, or audit-controlled operational software.
Experience with deterministic replay, run reconstruction, data lineage, reproducible pipelines, regression infrastructure, or automated validation of operational products.
Experience integrating software with external data providers, telemetry systems, mission planning systems, command and telemetry systems, or ground-to-flight interfaces.
Familiarity with CCSDS data formats, spacecraft command and telemetry systems, time systems, ephemeris products, maneuver products, or operational navigation data formats.

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain backend and infrastructure software for the Ground Navigation Software (GNS) stack.
Design and implement the GNS control plane used to schedule, execute, monitor, retry, cancel, and close navigation product runs.
Build workflow orchestration and product release workflows.
Design and implement databases, schemas, APIs, and data services for run state, product metadata, spacecraft configuration, operational constraints, provenance, approvals, and audit history.
Develop the navigation reference data and configuration store for approved mission configurations, Earth orientation data, space weather, planetary ephemerides, spacecraft models, maneuver assumptions, external data products, and operational constraints.
Build the navigation product repository for candidate products, released products, product versions, lineage, run artifacts, validation results, release status, and downstream delivery status.
Implement logic for product quality checks, operational approval criteria, completeness checks, consistency checks, freshness checks, and release-readiness rules.
Develop APIs and service interfaces that allow mission operations, ground software, flight software, constellation planning, networking, and analysis tools to consume approved navigation products.
Implement operator-facing tools for run monitoring, product review, validation status, data freshness, failure triage, release tracking, and system health.
Build ingestion pipelines for spacecraft telemetry (e.g., GNSS data, state and maneuver history, etc.), reference data, operational constraints, and external data products.
Implement data validation, schema validation, version control, provenance tracking, reproducibility, and configuration-controlled rerun capability.
Develop logging, metrics, alerting, traceability, and observability infrastructure for ground navigation workflows.
Build Docker-based local development, integration-test, and CI/CD environments for multi-service navigation ground software.
Develop automated test infrastructure, including unit tests, integration tests, end-to-end workflow tests, regression tests, replay tests, database migration tests, and release-readiness checks.
Support integration with cloud or on-prem infrastructure, containerized services, message buses, object stores, relational databases, and operational deployment environments.
Support integrated test campaigns, operational rehearsals, commissioning, flight-data investigations, anomaly response, and continuous improvement of navigation operations.