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Loft Orbital is building AI and machine learning infrastructure for space. The AI for Space group develops the stack that runs real machine learning in orbit, converting raw sensor data into decisions on the satellite itself so insights reach customers in minutes instead of hours.
The AI Engineering team owns the full path from a partner's trained model to optimized execution on flight hardware: compiling ONNX models into optimized engines for each accelerator, the Space Inference Engine and its execution providers, the SDK that packages models for flight, and performance tooling that validates models fit power, thermal, and latency budgets before launch. As the platform expands to a growing roster of defense and Earth-observation partners, the team's scope and silicon targets are expanding rapidly.
As an Onboard Software Engineer focused on Peripheral Services, you will own model compilation and the performance tooling behind it. You'll be the kind of engineer who takes an unfamiliar model and an unforgiving power budget, digs into the graph, and gets it running on real hardware without waiting for the path to be handed to you. You'll move between model compilation, runtime internals, quantization, and hardware-in-the-loop CI, sometimes in the same afternoon.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design, implement, and refine software with high ownership, driving impactful features from concept through delivery while ensuring robustness and reliability
- Review code, provide clear feedback, and enforce adherence to development processes, style guides, and design standards
- Design and implement unit and integration tests for both self-authored and peer-authored code
- Utilize version control systems to create feature branches, push code, and merge approved code into production
- Contribute to onboard software architecture through design proposals and collaborative review
- Participate in review and enhancement of software development processes and design standards
- Coordinate with downstream teams on distribution and adoption of latest releases
- Directly participate in operating the on-orbit fleet of satellites
Requirements:
Must have: 3+ years of software engineering experience using C/C++ (C++11 or newer) and Python; proficiency with Git and collaborative development workflows; experience with continuous integration tools (GitLab-CI, Jenkins, or similar); knowledge of build systems (Make, CMake); understanding of distributed architecture; familiarity with networking protocols (UDP, TCP, IP) and POSIX standards; experience developing multi-threaded applications; previous team leader or manager role.
Nice to have: familiarity with Go or Rust; experience with embedded Linux (Yocto, device trees, systemd, Linux on ARM); proficiency with unit test frameworks (pytest, Googletest, Unity); experience with middleware frameworks (gRPC, ZMQ, NATS); experience with containerization (Docker, K3S, systemd-nspawn); experience with space systems and concepts.
