Loft Orbital

Turnkey space missions via standardized satellites

Director of Embedded Software & FPGA Engineering

Engineering LeadershipUpdated on Nov 12

Full-timeGolden, CO, USAIn-person

About the Job

Requirements

At least 10 years of experience in embedded systems, FPGA, firmware, or closely related engineering, including delivery of mission-critical hardware or software.
Proven experience leading and managing technical teams, including geographically distributed teams.
Deep experience with FPGA design, embedded C/C++, real-time systems, and hardware/software integration.
Experience designing hardware abstractions and hardware-agnostic interfaces from technical and architectural perspectives.
Strong Linux kernel and embedded Linux experience, including low-level integration, drivers, boot, or system debugging.
Strong Yocto/OpenEmbedded and CI/CD experience, including build infrastructure, automated testing, and reproducible releases.
Experience building secure and sovereign environments, including trust boundaries, secure boot, signing, controlled dependencies, or related security architecture.
Experience with hypervisors, RISC-V, ARM, and Rust development environments.
A track record of making sound trade-offs across reliability, performance, security, schedule, and technology evolution.
Experience with spacecraft avionics, command and data handling (C&DH), payload interfaces, or satellite flight systems is preferred.
Experience in New Space or satellite manufacturing, particularly standardized, modular, or repeatable satellite platforms, is preferred.
Experience with radiation-tolerant or radiation-hardened design and understanding of the space environment is preferred.
Experience with real-time operating systems such as RTEMS, FreeRTOS, or VxWorks is preferred.
Experience with high-speed interfaces such as Ethernet, SpaceWire, SpaceFibre, CAN, PCIe, USB, or MIL-STD-1553 is preferred.
Experience with ARM-based embedded systems, U-Boot, ARM Trusted Firmware, device-tree overlays, or secure boot implementation is preferred.
Experience contributing to upstream Linux or maintaining kernel modules, platform drivers, or low-level middleware is preferred.
Experience with hypervisor isolation, virtualized I/O, partitioning, or mixed-criticality system design is preferred.
Experience using RISC-V or Rust in production, platform, tooling, or security-sensitive environments is preferred.
Exposure to onboard AI/ML compute or edge-processing hardware is preferred.
Experience supporting government or defense programs with formal assurance, security, sovereignty, and documentation requirements is preferred.

Responsibilities

Own the embedded software and FPGA roadmap and technical direction across Loft’s satellite platforms.
Define hardware-abstraction architecture and interfaces across FPGA, embedded software, onboard software, and operational layers.
Drive hardware-agnostic and reusable platform capabilities where they improve team independence and allow hardware and technology to evolve.
Enable embedded software and FPGA leads through clear direction, decision context, coaching, and removal of organizational or technical blockers.
Set expectations for architecture, design reviews, code quality, testing, verification, documentation, and operational readiness.
Build the core engineering foundation for Linux, Yocto/OpenEmbedded, CI/CD, reproducible builds, and secure or sovereign environments.
Guide technology choices involving hypervisors, RISC-V, Rust, and other platform technologies when they create durable value.
Act as the face of embedded software and FPGA and the triage point for company-wide technical issues, dependencies, and trade-offs.
Manage and develop geographically distributed leads and teams, including hiring, mentorship, performance management, and team health.
Represent the organization with customers, partners, and government or defense stakeholders when formal assurance and documentation are required.

Salary Range: 195000 to 275000 (Currency: USD) (Pay period: per-year-salary)

Wanna join the adventure?

Loft Orbital is making space simple, giving commercial, defense, and government customers fast, reliable access to orbit through a standardized satellite platform. Our Hub and Cockpit products cut the complexity of traditional satellite missions, reducing time-to-orbit from years to months as we build a growing, heterogeneous fleet in LEO with increasing onboard AI and compute.

As Director, Embedded Systems & FPGA Engineering, you will shape the technical foundations that determine how Loft’s hardware, embedded software, onboard software, and operational systems work together. This is an opportunity to define the abstraction layers and engineering interfaces that let teams move faster without sacrificing robustness, reliability, or system understanding. You will help create a platform that can evolve across processors, FPGAs, operating systems, hypervisors, RISC-V, Rust, and future technologies without forcing unnecessary changes through every layer of the stack.

You will lead experienced engineers who work at the intersection of hardware, firmware, software, systems, and operations. The role is hands-on in the technical sense: you will not write production code every day, but you should be comfortable going deep into architecture, Linux and build environments, debugging, security boundaries, integration problems, and technical trade-offs alongside the team.

About this role:

Own the ESW and FPGA roadmap and technical direction across Loft’s satellite platforms.
Define HW-abstraction architecture and interfaces across FPGA, embedded software, onboard software, and operational layers.
Drive hardware-agnostic and reusable platform capabilities where they improve team independence and allow HW and technology to evolve.
Enable the ESW and FPGA leads through clear direction, decision context, coaching, and removal of organizational or technical blockers.
Set expectations for architecture, design reviews, code quality, testing, verification, documentation, and operational readiness.
Build the core engineering foundation for Linux, Yocto/OpenEmbedded, CI/CD, reproducible builds, and secure or sovereign environments.
Guide technology choices involving hypervisors, RISC-V, Rust, and other platform technologies when they create durable value.
Act as the face of ESW and FPGA and the triage point for company-wide technical issues, dependencies, and trade-offs.
Manage and develop geographically distributed leads and teams, including hiring, mentorship, performance management, and team health.
Represent the organization with customers, partners, and government or defense stakeholders when formal assurance and documentation are required.

Must Haves:

10+ years of experience in embedded systems, FPGA, firmware, or closely related engineering, including delivery of mission-critical hardware or software.
Proven experience leading and managing technical teams, including geographically distributed teams.
Deep experience with FPGA design, embedded C/C++, real-time systems, and HW/SW integration.
Experience designing HW abstractions and hardware-agnostic interfaces from both technical and architectural perspectives.
Strong Linux kernel and embedded Linux experience, including low-level integration, drivers, boot, or system debugging.
Strong Yocto/OpenEmbedded and CI/CD experience, including build infrastructure, automated testing, and reproducible releases.
Experience building secure and sovereign environments, including trust boundaries, secure boot, signing, controlled dependencies, or related security architecture.
Experience with hypervisors, RISC-V, ARM and Rust development environments.
Track record of making sound trade-offs across reliability, performance, security, schedule, and technology evolution.
Collaborative, solution-minded leadership with the ability to enable leads, manage people with empathy and accountability, and act as a trusted cross-company technical representative.

Nice to Haves:

Experience with spacecraft avionics, command and data handling (C&DH), payload interfaces, or satellite flight systems.
Experience in New Space or satellite manufacturing, particularly standardized, modular, or repeatable satellite platforms.
Experience with radiation-tolerant or radiation-hardened design and an understanding of the space environment.
Experience with real-time operating systems such as RTEMS, FreeRTOS, or VxWorks.
Experience with high-speed interfaces such as Ethernet, SpaceWire, SpaceFibre, CAN, PCIe, USB, or MIL-STD-1553.
Experience with ARM-based embedded systems, U-Boot, ARM Trusted Firmware, device-tree overlays, or secure boot implementation.
Experience contributing to upstream Linux or maintaining kernel modules, platform drivers, or low-level middleware.
Experience with hypervisor isolation, virtualized I/O, partitioning, or mixed-criticality system design.
Experience using RISC-V or Rust in production, platform, tooling, or security-sensitive environments.
Exposure to onboard AI/ML compute or edge-processing hardware.
Experience supporting government or defense programs with formal assurance, security, sovereignty, and documentation requirements.

Some of Our Awesome Benefits:

100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision for you and your dependents
100% company-paid life, AD&D, and disability insurance
Fully paid parental leave: 16 weeks for birthing parents, 10 weeks for non-birthing parents
Flexible time off and 12 paid holidays
HSA with employer contribution, FSAs, and commuter benefits
Carrot Fertility, One Medical, and a free Employee Assistance Program
401(k) and equity
Daily catered lunches and snacks in office
Annual company off-site and regular social events
International exposure to our team in France
Relocation assistance when applicable

*Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented people tend to only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Loft, we value respectful debate and people who aren’t afraid to challenge assumptions. We strongly encourage you to apply, even if you don’t check all the boxes.

Who We Are

Loft: Space Made Simple.

Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable, and simple way to deploy missions in orbit.

We integrate, launch, and operate spacecraft, offering end-to-end missions as a service across Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on-orbit AI, national security missions, and more. Leveraging our existing space infrastructure and an extensive inventory of satellite buses, Loft is reducing years-long integration and launch timelines to months. With more than 30 missions flown, Loft’s flight heritage and proven technologies enable customers to focus on their mission objectives.

With a growing fleet on track to reach 30 satellites by 2027, we are scaling up quickly across our offices in San Francisco, CA | Golden, CO | and Toulouse, France to meet accelerating demand for space infrastructure.

As an international company your resume will be reviewed by people across our offices so please attach a copy in English.

About the Company

Loft Orbital

Turnkey space missions via standardized satellites

Loft Orbital provides space infrastructure as a service, offering turnkey access to satellite missions. It maintains an inventory of satellite buses and runs scheduled quarterly launches, enabling clients to deploy missions quickly without managing the technical details. The company handles all mission engineering, operations, and logistics, using identical satellite hardware for each mission to maximize flight heritage and reduce technical risk. Its payload-agnostic technology can support a wide range of payloads on a standard bus, giving it flexibility to serve diverse customers. Loft Orbital's model centers on delivering end-to-end space missions as a service, charging clients for deployment, operation, and the ongoing support needed to build and scale satellite constellations.

Company size: 201-500
Company stage: Series C
Total funding: $344M
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 2016

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