Space Datacenter Architect

Cowboy Space Corp.•San Carlos, CA

4d•$240,000 - $340,000•Onsite

About The Position

Cowboy Space Corp. is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our satellites operate in low Earth orbit to collect sunlight and enable a new class of capabilities—from powering on-orbit compute and transmitting energy via infrared lasers to delivering secure, high-bandwidth optical data. By rethinking how energy and data are generated and distributed in space, we are unlocking entirely new ways to operate in orbit and on Earth. Founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt (co-founder of Robinhood), Cowboy Space Corp. is backed by leading investors and built by a team from top aerospace and defense organizations. We are moving quickly to solve complex technical challenges and build a new category of space infrastructure. As the Space Datacenter Architect, you will own the end-to-end technical architecture that turns accelerator-class compute into flight-ready, commercially useful infrastructure. This is not a traditional spacecraft payload or a ground datacenter moved into orbit. You will reconcile useful compute throughput with power generation, heat rejection, radiation, mass, launch loads, limited serviceability, and autonomous recovery. Your scope spans compute, networking, storage, power, cooling, platform firmware, infrastructure software, security, reliability, and test. You will set subsystem boundaries and technical budgets, lead architecture reviews, and guide a multidisciplinary team from requirements through flight readiness. This hands-on technical leadership role is based in San Carlos, California.

Requirements

10+ years architecting complex compute or other integrated hardware/software systems.
Experience taking a multidisciplinary system from requirements through integration and validation.
Experience with GPU, AI, HPC, or other accelerator-based systems at server, rack, or cluster scale.
Strong technical judgment across compute hardware, networking, storage, power, cooling, firmware, and infrastructure software.
Demonstrated ability to make high-consequence decisions using quantitative trades and test evidence.
Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing or operating large GPU or HPC clusters.
Spaceflight, radiation, qualification, or other non-serviceable-system experience.
High-density liquid cooling and high-power electrical-distribution experience.
Experience with high-performance fabrics, AI storage, or workload orchestration.
Experience establishing a new platform architecture and supplier ecosystem.

Responsibilities

Own the Space Datacenter architecture across hardware, firmware, software, and fault management.
Translate mission and customer workloads into requirements, interfaces, performance targets, technical budgets, and acceptance criteria.
Define node and cluster architectures, including failure domains and graceful-degradation behavior.
Drive quantitative trades across throughput, power, thermal margin, radiation risk, mass, cost, manufacturability, and schedule.
Establish interfaces for boot, provisioning, orchestration, observability, updates, fault isolation, and autonomous recovery.
Define qualification and recovery evidence with reliability, validation, and subsystem owners.
Lead architecture reviews, resolve cross-functional conflicts, and maintain requirements traceability.
Guide major platform and supplier decisions and communicate technical risk clearly to engineering and company leadership.