Staff Ground Software Engineer

Turion Space•Irvine, CA

1d•$175,000 - $225,000•Onsite

About The Position

Turion is developing vertically integrated hardware and software for the space economy, including DROID space vehicles and Starfire software for simulation, modeling, planning, and operations. The company is seeking a Staff Ground Software Engineer to architect, automate, and operate the mission-critical infrastructure that powers spacecraft operations. The role ensures ground systems are highly available, observable, secure, and scalable so operators can command satellites, process high-volume downlinks, and respond to on-orbit events. The engineer works across the full software and infrastructure lifecycle, influencing architecture, developing core platform services, improving reliability, and advancing engineering practices. The work includes addressing distributed-systems challenges in telemetry ingestion and processing, resilience, deployment and operational automation, observability, and security. The engineer partners with mission operators, flight software engineers, and cross-functional teams to keep ground systems robust, maintainable, and operationally efficient as mission complexity grows. The role builds spacecraft-operations infrastructure, including a scalable cloud-native platform, automated deployment and operational tooling for satellite fleets, reusable infrastructure modules, and observability, telemetry, and alerting systems. It is a full-time, exempt position based on-site at the company's Irvine, California office. Employees may be asked to support alternate or extended shifts and travel during peak work periods. The salary range is $175,000–$225,000 USD.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent experience.
At least 8 years of software or infrastructure engineering experience, including ownership of major components or services.
Strong experience with distributed systems.
Expertise with cloud-native and container-based architectures.
Deep Kubernetes experience, including design, operation, and tuning.
Significant experience operating live, customer-facing, cloud-hosted systems.
Demonstrated leadership in on-call work for high-availability environments.
Must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI clearance.
Must meet applicable U.S. export-control requirements: be a U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee, or be eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Nice To Haves

Proficiency in Go.
Expertise in multiple cloud stacks, such as AWS and Azure.
Experience with real-time data processing or data engineering pipelines.
Proficiency in database administration.
Interest in space systems and mission operations.

Responsibilities

Design, automate, and operate infrastructure enabling spacecraft operations.
Define architectural direction for mission-critical systems, including autonomy, data pipelines, and real-time processing.
Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, deployment frameworks, and environment-level automation.
Establish and uphold reliability and performance standards across ground systems.
Lead and participate in on-call rotations for high-availability production environments.
Partner with mission operators to translate operational needs into reliable services and tools.
Drive engineering excellence through documentation, reviews, and technical mentorship.
Improve the accessibility, efficiency, and reliability of satellite operations at scale.
Develop core platform services and reusable infrastructure modules.
Build observability, telemetry, and alerting systems for real-time operations.