Design, develop, test, review, and maintain reliable onboard spacecraft software for Hyperdrive, including core mission services, fault detection, lifecycle management, and spacecraft interfaces. Contribute to software architecture, development standards, CI and build processes, release coordination, and satellite fleet operations. Work with C/C++, Python, distributed systems, networking protocols, multithreaded applications, embedded Linux, and related tools.
Wanna join the adventure?
Loft’s Onboard Software group provides the on-orbit software that powers our core products. This is responsible for monitoring and control of major space program elements, including:
Flight Products computational environments (including physical and virtual processors);
Interfaces with external equipment (imagers, RF, ISL); and
Interfaces with the spacecraft bus.
Hyperdrive is the common platform powering every onboard service across our spacecraft.
The team builds the core capabilities other onboard services need to run mission logic—from interactions and housekeeping to events, automated fault detection and recovery, and lifecycle management.
By making complex spacecraft software consistent, observable, and resilient, Hyperdrive helps teams move faster while keeping missions safe in orbit.
About this role:
- Design, implement, and refine software with a high degree of ownership, driving impactful features from concept through delivery while ensuring robustness and reliability.
- Review code, provide clear feedback, and enforce adherence to established development processes, style guides, and design standards to maintain consistency and quality across the codebase.
- Design and implement unit 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 branches.
- Contribute to the onboard software architecture through design proposals and collaborative review
- Participate in the review and enhancement of software development processes and design standards.
- Coordinate with downstream teams on the release, distribution and adoption of latest releases.
- In addition to responsibilities within onboard software, you’ll have the opportunity to directly be involved in operating our on-orbit fleet of satellites.
Must Haves:
- 5+ years' software engineering experience, using programming languages including C/C++ (C++11 or newer) and Python.
- Experience with version control systems such as Git
- Experience with continuous integration tools (e.g., GitLab-CI, Jenkins).
- Experience with build systems (e.g., Make, CMake).
- Experience with library management and ABI/API version control.
- Understanding of distributed architecture.
- Familiarity with networking protocols (e.g., UDP, TCP, IP) and POSIX standards.
- Experience in developing multi-threaded applications.
Nice to Haves:
- Familiarity with additional programming languages, such as Go or Rust.
- Experience with embedded Linux operation, including Yocto, device trees, systemd, and Linux on ARM platforms.
- Proficiency with unit test frameworks (e.g., pytest, Googletest, Unity)
- Experience with middleware framework (gRPC, ZMQ/NATS, etc.)
- Experience with containerization technologies (Docker, K3S, systemd-nspawn)
Some of Our Awesome Benefits:
- 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance option for employees and dependents
- Flexible Spending (FSA) and Health Savings (HSA) Accounts offered with an employer contribution to the HSA
- 100% employer paid Life, AD&D, Short-Term, and Long-Term Disability insurance
- Flexible Time Off policy for vacation and sick leave, and 12 paid holidays
- 401(k) plan and equity options
- Daily catered lunches and snacks
- International exposure to our team in France
- Fully paid parental leave; 14 weeks for primary caregiver and 10 weeks for secondary caregiver
- Carrot Fertility provides comprehensive, inclusive fertility healthcare and family-forming benefits with financial support
- Off-sites and many social events and celebrations
- 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.
Loft Orbital San Francisco, California, USA Office
715 Bryant St. , San Francisco, CA, United States, 94117
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