Senior Software Engineer (Space Communications)
northwoodspace3 hours ago
Washington, DC, USA or Torrance, CA, USASenior
Base Salary
$161k - $224k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design and implement a global distributed control plane that schedules satellite passes across AWS and on-premises nodes.
- Build and operate customer-facing and internal APIs for searching, reserving, updating, and canceling satellite passes.
- Develop workflow orchestration, satellite communications, telemetry, command-uplink, and data-transfer systems.
- Design control software for ground-station hardware, embedded systems, and RF modems.
- Architect high-throughput data pipelines and a Tbps-class SD-WAN overlay across sites, storage buckets, and customer VPCs.
- Create monitoring, alerting, telemetry, predictive-diagnostics, and uptime-improvement systems.
- Build infrastructure, security, deployment, production-line testing, and hardware/software reliability tools.
- Develop simulations and orchestration software for satellite, network, antenna, and distributed-node systems.
- Mentor teams, drive technical decisions, and establish engineering standards through design RFCs.
Requirements
- 5–7+ years of professional software development experience, including experience gained through internships, projects, or personal work.
- Completed bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, with equivalent experience considered.
- Proficiency in one or more of Rust, Golang, C, or C++.
- Experience designing and implementing distributed systems, cloud services, orchestration engines, data pipelines, APIs, or high-throughput networking.
- Familiarity with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud; embedded systems; FPGA programming; FreeRTOS; or Zephyr.
- Experience with JavaScript or TypeScript and front-end frameworks such as Angular or React.
- Experience with monitoring and alerting tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or ELK Stack.
- Experience with Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, or GitLab CI/CD and an understanding of security and compliance practices.
- Experience with InfluxDB, TimescaleDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, data processing, simulations, automated testing, or production-line testing software is preferred.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret Security Clearance and satisfy applicable U.S. space-technology export-control requirements.
Benefits
- The role offers broad ownership across cloud, distributed systems, APIs, embedded ground-station software, networking, telemetry, simulations, and testing.
- The position may involve work across a full-stack, vertically integrated space infrastructure company with software deployed globally.
- A reasonable accommodation is available during the application or interview process.
- The role requires obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret Security Clearance, which may not be immediately necessary upon hire.
Tech Stack
AngularAnsibleAWSAzureCC++GitLab CI/CDGoGoogle CloudGrafanaInfluxDBJavaScriptJenkinsMySQLPostgreSQLPrometheusReactRustTerraformTypeScript
About northwoodspace
Northwood Space builds and operates a global network of phased-array ground stations that provide real-time, reliable links to satellites. It serves government and commercial satellite operators supporting national security, connectivity, and disaster response missions, offering ground-network capacity as a service with a vertically integrated hardware and software stack. The privately held company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and focuses on international markets alongside U.S. government and allied space customers.