Senior Space Mission Software Engineer

Varda Space•El Segundo, CA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The Senior Space Mission Software Engineer is responsible for Varda’s critical ground-segment software and the platform that enables spacecraft operations. The role spans telemetry and commanding, data acquisition and distribution, mission-control interfaces, simulation and test automation, and reliable deployment across laboratory, test-range, and mission-operations environments. The engineer works hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF and ground systems, and mission operations. Varda is developing commercial space infrastructure, including in-orbit pharmaceutical processing and reentry capsules. The company designs, builds, and operates its W-Series vehicles in-house, including their processing payloads, capsules, heat shields, and satellite buses. Varda is headquartered in El Segundo, California, with additional offices in Washington, DC, and Huntsville, Alabama. This position is on-site in El Segundo, California.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, physics, engineering, or equivalent technical experience in safety-critical software.
At least 5 years of experience developing spacecraft or similar safety-critical software.
Expertise developing in Python and a strong understanding of Python language concepts.
Strong systems fundamentals, including concurrency, networking, performance, and reliability.
Experience building real-time data acquisition, scaling, and distribution services, including low-latency messaging and time-series and relational data stores.
Hands-on experience with CI/CD, dependency and build systems, and infrastructure-as-code.
End-to-end observability experience covering logging, metrics, and tracing.
Experience with Docker/Kubernetes, release management, phased rollouts, and operational readiness for controlled networks.
Must meet Varda’s U.S.-person requirement for access to export-controlled items: U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).

Nice To Haves

Proficiency in C++, Ansible, and/or NiceGUI.
Experience with data acquisition and closed-loop control in laboratory or test-control environments.
Prior work on CI, testing, simulation, or data tools integrated with flight-software teams.
Experience with requirements, testing, and certification artifacts from safety-critical or certified workflows.
Knowledge of ground-systems standards and security in mission networks.
Experience building mission-grade user interfaces with structured command workflows, alarming, and situational awareness.

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain reliable ground-segment services for telemetry ingestion, scaling, distribution, and commanding, ensuring deterministic behavior for real-time operations and post-flight analysis.
Deliver operator-grade mission-control interfaces and dashboards that optimize operations time and reduce cognitive load during integration, testing, and on-orbit operations.
Build tools for flight-software simulations, device emulators, and scenario-based automated tests to enable safe, rapid iteration for avionics, GNC, and operations teams.
Design, implement, and productionize software for mission and ground-software teams.
Standardize CI/CD pipelines, artifact management, service templates, infrastructure-as-code, simulation and hardware-in-the-loop frameworks, test harnesses, and observability as self-service tooling.
Create robust deployment patterns for laboratory benches, test stands, and mission networks, including safe rollout and rollback strategies and deployment approaches for air-gapped or limited-connectivity environments.