Ground Software Engineer - Core

Wanna join the adventure? Loft Orbital is looking for a Software Engineer to join our Core team within Ground Platform. The team develops the core capabilities that support Loft's ground platform, improve development workflows, and ensure platform reliability. You'll help build shared services and tools that benefit software teams across Loft. You'll work on backend services, workflow automation, AI tooling, and platform infrastructure, with a focus on observability and reliability. You'll also have the opportunity to take part in spacecraft operations through SatDevOps rotations, helping investigate anomalies and supporting real-time incident response when needed. If you're excited about improving how software is developed across Loft, contributing to key technical decisions, and building more reliable platform systems, we'd love to hear from you. We’re hiring for one position across multiple locations - you only need to apply once. About this role:

• Evaluate and implement new technologies and software patterns that propagate to the entire Loft's software stack
• Lead the creation and evolution of Loft's AI tooling for development, review, and spacecraft anomaly investigation
• Develop central ground platform functionalities such as workflow automation, microservice inter-communication, and metrics
• Take responsibility for the reliability and performance of Loft's ground platform infrastructure, including message queues, CI/CD, and observability
• Have the opportunity to take part in spacecraft operations through SatDevOps rotations, occasionally helping investigate anomalies and supporting real‑time incident response when needed
• Collaborate with software engineers and satellite operators from all over the company to support and foster consistent, maintainable, and performant software solutions

Must Haves:

• Solid backend software development experience
• Hands-on knowledge of deployment and Infrastructure as Code
• Ability to define and maintain CI/CD pipelines
• Experience working with Kubernetes

Nice to Haves:

• Python development, particularly with Django
• Knowledge of GraphQL and Graphene
• Experience with message queues and streaming technologies (NATS)
• Knowledge of DevOps and observability tools (Helm, Terraform, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Loki, etc)
• Familiarity with AI tooling
• Frontend development with Vue and Web Components

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

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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.