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Northwood Space is a modern space infrastructure company building a global network of phased array ground stations for satellite communications. The company designs, builds, and deploys scalable systems supporting national security, global connectivity, and disaster response missions.
As a Command & Telemetry Software Engineer, you will develop critical ground software that handles, processes, and delivers mission data across Northwood's satellite ground network. You will own components of the communications data path—from protocol implementation and real-time stream processing through integration testing and operational deployment.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design, build, and maintain software for ingesting, processing, and routing telemetry, tracking, and command data
- Implement and validate CCSDS protocols, including space packets, transfer frames, synchronization, and data encapsulation
- Develop high-performance data pipelines connecting software-defined radios, ground-station infrastructure, and customer endpoints
- Build tooling for packet parsing, frame validation, buffering, recording, replay, monitoring, and debugging
- Translate customer mission requirements into configurable data-handling workflows and interfaces
- Collaborate with DSP and FPGA engineers to define and validate interfaces between physical-layer processing and higher-level communications software
- Test communications workflows using simulated, hardware-in-the-loop, and live satellite data
- Own software through development, deployment, operational validation, and ongoing mission support
Required qualifications include a Bachelor's degree with 2–5+ years of relevant experience (or Master's with 1–4+ years) in computer science, electrical engineering, telecommunications, or related field. You must have strong programming skills in systems-oriented languages (Rust, C++, or Go) and experience developing software for networking, telecommunications, real-time data processing, or distributed systems. Solid understanding of network protocols, binary data formats, serialization, buffering, and asynchronous data processing is essential. You should have demonstrated ownership of a production software system from initial design through deployment and operational use.
Preferred qualifications include experience with CCSDS standards, satellite telemetry and command systems, ground stations, mission operations, high-throughput/low-latency data pipelines, TCP/UDP/multicast/gRPC/WebSockets, SDR/modem/FPGA integration, and packet capture/protocol analysis tools.
Note: Due to U.S. Government space technology export regulations (ITAR), candidates must be U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
