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Onboard Software Engineer - Core Services Verified today

Loft Orbital · Golden, CO · Software · first seen 2026-09-23
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The role

Loft's Onboard Software group develops the flight software that powers our satellites in orbit. The Core Services team builds high-level vehicle services and functions including file transfer, time synchronization, automation, scheduling, attitude control, and navigation. These services are reused across all satellite programs and form the foundation of our onboard architecture.

You will take high ownership of software design, implementation and refinement, driving impactful features from concept through delivery while ensuring robustness and reliability.

Your responsibilities

  • Design, implement, and refine onboard software with high ownership and robustness.
  • Review code and provide clear feedback; enforce adherence to development processes, style guides and design standards.
  • Design and implement unit tests for self-authored and peer-authored code.
  • Use version control systems to create feature branches, push code and merge into production.
  • Contribute to onboard software architecture through design proposals and collaborative review.
  • Participate in review and enhancement of software development processes and design standards.
  • Coordinate with downstream teams on release, distribution and adoption of latest releases.
  • Directly operate and support Loft's on-orbit satellite fleet.

Must have

  • 2+ years software engineering experience with 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 or Jenkins.
  • Experience with build systems, e.g. Make or CMake.
  • Understanding of distributed architecture.
  • Familiarity with networking protocols including UDP, TCP, IP and POSIX standards.
  • Experience developing multi-threaded applications.

Nice to have

  • Familiarity with additional programming languages such as Go or Rust.
  • Experience with embedded Linux, including Yocto, device trees, systemd and Linux on ARM platforms.
  • Proficiency with unit test frameworks, e.g. pytest, Googletest or Unity, and keyword-driven test frameworks such as Robot or Cucumber.
  • Experience with middleware frameworks such as gRPC, ZMQ, NATS.
  • Experience with containerization technologies such as Docker, K3S or systemd-nspawn.

Benefits

  • 100% company-paid medical, dental and vision insurance for employees and dependents.
  • Flexible Spending (FSA) and Health Savings (HSA) Accounts with employer HSA contribution.
  • 100% employer-paid Life, AD&D, Short-Term and Long-Term Disability insurance.
  • Flexible Time Off policy and 12 paid holidays.
  • 401(k) plan and equity options.
  • Daily catered lunches and snacks.
  • Fully paid parental leave: 14 weeks primary caregiver, 10 weeks secondary.
  • Carrot Fertility comprehensive fertility and family-forming benefits.
  • Off-sites and social events.
  • Relocation assistance when applicable.

About Loft Orbital

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 for Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on-orbit AI, national security missions and more. With more than 30 missions flown and a growing fleet on track to reach 30 satellites by 2027, we operate from San Francisco, CA; Golden, CO; and Toulouse, France.