Spacecraft Software & Automation Engineer

Spire Global is a space-to-cloud analytics company that owns and operates the largest multi-purpose constellation of satellites. Its proprietary data and algorithms provide the most advanced maritime, aviation, and weather tracking in the world. In addition to its constellation, Spire’s data infrastructure includes a global ground station network and 24/7 operations that provide real-time global coverage of every point on Earth.

Job Description 

The AIS/ADS-B payload team seeks to hire a new member to take on the workload associated to the maintenance of Spire’s AIS and ADS-B payloads on-orbit. Our Software Defined Radio (SDR) payloads track the movement of vessels and aircraft by monitor transmissions from their transponders. 

As a spacecraft automation engineer in the payload team at Spire, you will be part of a close-knit team that is focused on providing high-quality AIS and ADS-B data and meta-data to customers around the globe. You will write software that monitors and safeguards the operation of our payloads in the satellite constellation, ensuring that we can scale as Spire’s constellation continues to grow. You will also work closely with the satellite operations team to tune the payload configuration and to drive the investigation into any payload anomalies. 

Responsibilities:

• Maintaining and evolving a system to monitor the payload operational status, performance, and anomalies. 
• Developing a payload configuration management system to allow operating the constellation of satellites efficiently at scale  
• Automating preparation and deployment of payload software updates, on-orbit 
• Maintaining a database of the payload software versions, configurations and known degradations across the Spire constellation 
• Creating and maintaining tools to automate or simplify the execution of the tasks 
• Supporting and guiding the payload checkout and commissioning phase after each launch, through data analysis, visualization, and detailed documentation 
• Investigating and mitigating on-orbit payload anomalies that are escalated to the engineering team

Basic qualifications: 

• Experience in design, implementation, and deployment of cloud-based services and applications using Infrastructure-as-Code methods 
• Development experience with cloud services, such as AWS and GCP 
• 5+ years of experience in design, development, and maintenance of non-trivial codebases 
• Fluency in Python and SQL 
• Linux system administration and shell scripting skills
• Experience with setting up and managing CI/CD systems, such as Concourse CI and Jenkins

Preferred qualifications and experience:

• Development experience from strongly typed languages, such as C++ and Rust 
• Development experience from targeting embedded Linux platforms
• Experience in GitOps, working with ArgoCD on Kubernetes and Terraform
• Experience in optimising cloud-based systems for performance and operational cost

Spire is Global and our success draws upon the diverse viewpoints, skills and experiences of our employees. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or veteran status.

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