Senior Mission Software Engineer
Varda Space Industries8 hours ago
El Segundo, CA, USASenior
Base Salary
$169k - $216k/yr
Responsibilities
- Develop and maintain high-reliability services for telemetry ingestion, scaling, distribution, and spacecraft commanding.
- Build operator-grade mission-control UIs and dashboards for integration, testing, and on-orbit operations.
- Create flight-software simulation tools, device emulators, scenario-based automated tests, and hardware-in-the-loop frameworks.
- Design and productionize mission-platform software, including service templates, artifact management, test harnesses, observability, and self-service tooling.
- Implement deployment patterns, phased rollouts, rollback strategies, and air-gapped or limited-connectivity deployments across lab, test-range, and mission environments.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, physics, engineering, or equivalent technical experience in safety-critical software.
- 5+ years of experience developing spacecraft or similar safety-critical software.
- Expertise in Python and strong understanding of language concepts.
- Strong fundamentals in concurrency, networking, performance, and reliability.
- Experience building real-time data acquisition, scaling, and distribution services using low-latency messaging and time-series and relational stores.
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD, dependency and build systems, and infrastructure-as-code.
- Experience with logging, metrics, tracing, Docker, Kubernetes, release management, phased rollouts, and operational readiness for controlled networks.
- Preferred experience with C++, Ansible, NiceGUI, DAQ, closed-loop control, flight-software-integrated testing and simulation tools, safety-critical certification artifacts, ground-system standards, mission-network security, and mission-grade operator UIs.
Benefits
- Fully on-site role in El Segundo, California.
- Flexible PTO and 12 paid holidays.
- Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents, with FSA and employer-matched HSA options.
- Voluntary accident, hospital, critical illness, and pet insurance; $120/month wellness reimbursement; parental and family-building benefits; and sponsored One Medical memberships.
- Incentive equity, a 401(k) plan with a 6% immediately vested employer match, $20/pay-period cell phone reimbursement, and relocation support if needed.
- Daily lunch, twice-weekly dinner, company events, and complimentary EV charging.
About Varda Space Industries
Varda Space Industries builds and operates in-orbit manufacturing platforms and reentry capsules so pharmaceutical and materials companies can produce goods in microgravity and return them to Earth. The company designs its W‑Series vehicles in-house, including pharmaceutical processing payloads, capsules, heat shields, and satellite buses, and sells manufacturing and reentry services to commercial customers. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in El Segundo, California, it also has offices in Washington, DC and Huntsville, Alabama.