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Salary: USD 169,067 - 216,031 / annual
Varda Space Industries is building commercial space infrastructure, including in-orbit pharmaceutical processing vehicles, reentry capsules, heat shields, and satellite buses. The company operates at the intersection of space technology and orbital manufacturing, with leadership and staff from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and major pharmaceutical companies.
The Senior Spacecraft Mission Software Engineer is responsible for Varda's critical ground segment software and the platform that enables spacecraft operations. This role bridges telemetry and commanding, data acquisition and distribution, mission control interfaces, simulation, and test automation, with reliable deployment across lab, test range, and mission operations environments. You will work hands-on with flight software, avionics, RF/ground systems, and mission operations teams.
Key responsibilities include:
• Own Ground Segment Services: Develop and maintain high-reliability services for telemetry ingestion, scaling, distribution, and commanding. Ensure deterministic behavior for real-time operations and post-flight analysis.
• Mission Control Interfaces: Deliver operator-grade UIs and dashboards that optimize "ops time" and reduce cognitive load across integration, test, and on-orbit operations phases.
• Simulation and Test Automation: Build tools to run flight-software simulations, device emulators, and scenario-based automated tests—enabling fast, safe iteration for avionics, guidance/navigation/control, and operations teams.
• Build the Mission Platform: Design, implement, and productionize software for mission and ground software teams. Standardize CI/CD pipelines, artifact management, service templates, infrastructure-as-code, simulation and hardware-in-the-loop frameworks, test harnesses, and observability—all delivered as self-service tooling.
• Deployments Across Environments: Create robust deployment patterns for lab benches, test stands, and mission networks. Implement safe rollout/rollback strategies and air-gapped or limited-connectivity deployment approaches.
Varda is headquartered in El Segundo, California, with offices and production facilities in El Segundo, Washington DC, and Huntsville, Alabama. The company was founded in January 2021 and is backed by Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, and Also Capital.
Note: This role requires U.S. person status (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)) due to ITAR export-control requirements.
REQUIREMENTS:
Basic Qualifications:
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering, or equivalent technical experience in safety-critical software
• 5+ years of experience in the development of spacecraft or similar safety-critical software
• Expertise with development in Python, along with a strong understanding of the language concepts
• Strong systems fundamentals: concurrency, networking, performance, reliability
• Experience building real-time data acquisition, scaling, and distribution services—low-latency messaging, time-series and relational stores
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD, dependency/build systems, and infrastructure-as-code
• End-to-end observability experience: logging, metrics, tracing
• Docker/Kubernetes; release management, phased rollouts, and operational readiness for controlled networks
Preferred Skills and Experience:
• Proficiency in C++, Ansible, and/or NiceGUI
• Experience with DAQ and closed-loop control (lab/test control environments)
• Prior work on CI/testing/simulation/data tools integrated with flight software teams
• Experience with requirements, test, and certification artifacts from safety-critical or certified workflows
• Knowledge of ground systems standards; security in mission networks
• Experience building mission-grade UIs with structured command workflows, alarming, and situational awareness
