Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer

Varda Space•El Segundo, CA

21h•Onsite

About The Position

Varda is developing commercial space infrastructure, including in-orbit pharmaceutical processing and reentry capsules. Its W-Series vehicles—including pharmaceutical-processing payloads, capsules, C-PICA heat shields, and satellite buses—are designed, built, and operated in-house. The company is headquartered in El Segundo, California, with additional offices in Washington, DC, and Huntsville, Alabama. The Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer is responsible for Varda’s critical ground-segment software and the platform supporting spacecraft operations. The role spans telemetry and commanding, data acquisition and distribution, mission-control interfaces, simulation and test automation, and reliable deployment across lab, test-range, and mission-operations environments. The engineer works hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF and ground systems, and mission operations.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, math, 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, including logging, metrics, and tracing.
Experience with Docker/Kubernetes, release management, phased rollouts, and operational readiness for controlled networks.
U.S. person status as defined in the posting, because the role provides access to export-controlled items.

Nice To Haves

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

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain high-reliability ground-segment services for telemetry ingestion, scaling, distribution, and commanding.
Ensure deterministic behavior for real-time operations and post-flight analysis.
Build operator-grade mission-control UIs and dashboards that improve 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 support safe iteration by 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 lab benches, test stands, and mission networks.
Implement safe rollout and rollback strategies, including deployment approaches for air-gapped or limited-connectivity environments.