Senior Software Engineer

Who We Are:

Inversion builds advanced reentry systems to deliver next-generation capabilities from space.
 
Our mission is to make Earth radically more accessible by turning Low-Earth Orbit into an on-demand logistics domain. We see space not as a destination, but as a platform — one that unlocks unprecedented speed and global reach.
 
Our spacecraft are designed to deliver payloads anywhere on Earth in under an hour, operating through extreme reentry conditions and landing with high precision. These systems open the door to new ways of testing, delivering, and operating at hypersonic speeds.
 
Inherently dual-use, our technology is built to meet urgent national security needs while laying the groundwork for future commercial applications. Backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, Spark Capital, and Lockheed Martin Ventures, and working with partners such as the U.S. Space Force and NASA, Inversion is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in space-based defense and logistics.

About the Role

As a Senior Back-end Engineer at Inversion, you will work as part of the simulation team to design, develop, and maintain the architecture and server-side logic of the applications that support the simulation and test environments for our flight systems. The simulation team is responsible for ensuring that flight software and flight hardware can be continuously integrated and tested under realistic flight conditions. You will play a key role in the design and development of data management and self-service tools that will enable fast, repeatable development and deployment workflows across the engineering stack. Your work will empower Inversion’s engineering teams to iterate rapidly throughout the development life cycle and will strengthen Inversion’s ability to put our products into the hands of our customers with unprecedented speed and agility.

What You'll Do

• Design, deploy, and maintain the server-side logic and infrastructure of the applications that support simulation workflows, including high-performance computing (HPC), software-in-the-loop (SIL) testing, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing
• Select a back-end tech stack that ensures the performance and scalability of our applications
• Design and implement a back-end architecture that strikes the right balance between simplicity and flexibility
• Design and develop databases architectures and data pipelines to meet configuration and data management needs
• Leverage self-documenting API tools and technologies to develop robust and efficient APIs
• Leverage modern web frameworks to develop server-side logic
• Work with front-end engineers to integrate the front-end with the back-end and deliver a smooth user experience (UX)
• Contribute to the design and development of a simulation system capable of automatically provisioning and deploying resources to support simulation workflows

Required Qualifications

Candidates must meet all of the following qualifications to be considered for this position:

• 6+ years of professional experience in back-end or full-stack development
• Expertise in back-end engineering and best practices
• Proficiency in one or more scripting languages (Python, Lua, Bash, PowerShell, etc.)
• Experience with Linux-based systems
• Experience with modern DevOps practices
• Experience with one or more back-end architectures (monolithic, modular, serverless, event-based, microservices, etc.)
• Experience with one or more API architectures (REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets, Webhooks, etc.)
• Experience with one or more database systems (MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB, DynamoDB,  InfluxDB, etc.)
• Experience with cloud computing platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenStack, CloudStack, etc.)

The ideal candidate will also meet one of the following qualifications:

• Expertise in database administration for both SQL and NoSQL databases
• Expertise in SaaS/PaaS development
• Expertise in network administration

Desired Qualifications

• Extensive experience with Python and Python-based web frameworks (Django, Flask, Quart, FastAPI, etc.)
• Extensive experience with C/C++ or Rust
• Experience with async and multithreaded architectures
• Experience with time-series databases (InfluxDB, QuestDB, TimescaleDB, Prometheus, etc.)
• Experience with message-oriented middleware (NATS, Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.)
• Familiarity with one or more front-end JS frameworks (React, Angular, etc.)
• Familiarity with one or more open-source cloud computing platforms (OpenStack, CloudStack, etc.)
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Docker Compose, etc.) and orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, etc.)
• Familiarity with system observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, etc.)

Our office headquarters is located in Playa Vista, CA. This position requires in office presence.

_{The California annual base salary for this role is currently $139,000 - $201,000.  Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data.  Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.}