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Salary: USD 145,000 - 171,000 / annual
Cowboy Space Corporation is building space-based solar energy infrastructure to solve the global energy crisis. The company develops modular, scalable satellites in Low Earth Orbit that collect sunlight and transmit energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), power on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and provide secure, high-bandwidth optical data transport. Founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt (co-founder of Robinhood), the company has raised ~$365 million from top-tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The team includes veterans from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis, and NASA.
As Ground Station Software Engineer, you will own the software that forms the communications backbone between Earth and space. You'll design and develop distributed software systems (Python and Go) for ground station network operations and core infrastructure services. Key responsibilities include: designing and developing distributed systems for ground station operations; testing and integrating software on commercial and in-house hardware; building simulation and testing frameworks to validate system behavior; collaborating with hardware engineers on end-to-end integration and debugging; writing performant, reliable code for resource-constrained, mission-critical environments; developing internal tools for testing, automation, and operational workflows; participating in system bring-up, integration, and launch preparation; monitoring and supporting on-orbit operations with debugging and performance optimization; contributing to system architecture decisions across software/hardware boundaries; investigating anomalies and performing root cause analysis; mentoring team engineers and reviewing designs/code; and driving the team toward near-term on-orbit demonstration with pragmatic scope and risk tradeoffs.
This is a high-ownership role in a fast-paced, engineering-driven environment working on one of humanity's most complex engineering challenges.
REQUIREMENTS:
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field
- 2+ years of experience building production software systems
- Strong programming skills in Python or Go
- Experience working close to hardware, distributed systems, or real-time systems
- Solid understanding of systems fundamentals (operating systems, networking, concurrency)
- Experience in fast-paced, engineering-driven environments
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with real-time operating systems software, embedded systems, or robotics
- Background in aerospace, autonomous systems, or high-reliability environments
- Experience building simulation frameworks or hardware-in-the-loop testing systems
- Familiarity with Linux-based systems and low-level debugging
- Experience with cloud infrastructure or distributed systems for mission operations
- Track record of owning systems end-to-end in high-ownership environments
ITAR Requirement: Applicants must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
