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Loft Orbital

Turnkey space missions via standardized satellites

Backend Software Engineer - Mission Planning Strategy

Backend EngineeringPosted on Nov 9
Full-timeSan Francisco, CA, USA$150k - $195k /yr

About the Job

Requirements

  • A bachelor's degree in Software Engineering, Physics/Astrodynamics, Mathematics, or a related field is required.
  • At least 2 years of experience designing and developing software libraries and backend services is required; Python is preferred.
  • Ability to operate independently and solve complex problems is required.
  • Experience with system design is required.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences are required.

Responsibilities

  • Develop and improve a new software product that manages customer orders across a multi-sensor satellite constellation.
  • Interface with teams to help design customer-facing interfaces and the backend pipeline from planning to onboard execution.
  • Build tools and services that help sales and operators understand current and future capacity, operational risks, and growth opportunities.
  • Solve complex multi-objective optimization problems to maximize collection capacity, balance conflicting customer constraints, and help define what optimal means.
  • Design systems of systems by decomposing complex problems into well-bounded services with clear interfaces and reasoning about how they interact, fail, and scale together.

Desired Qualifications

  • A master's degree in Software Engineering, Physics/Astrodynamics, Mathematics, or a related field.
  • At least 5 years of experience designing and developing software libraries and backend services; Python is preferred.
  • Proficiency with Django and GraphQL stacks.
  • Hands-on experience operating spacecraft.
  • Experience with C++ or high-performance Python, including vectorization, just-in-time compilation such as Numba, or GPU parallelization.
  • Practical experience building high-performance backend software applications and/or libraries.
  • Specialization in integer, linear, or multi-objective optimization or other Operations Research-style problems, backend/API performance optimization, distributed systems, security, Earth observation tasking, or high-performance computing.

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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