Ground Software Engineer Senior - (Security Clearance; Field-Based)

We are looking for a Senior Full Stack Software Engineer who thrives working independently and is passionate about building software that pushes the bounds of what's possible. Our software is a modern web-based application (React/TypeScript, C# .NET) with a microservice infrastructure (Docker, Kafka, REST) that operators use to monitor and control constellations of spacecraft across several active missions.

In this role, you will be embedded at or near a Mission Operation Center (MOC) local to you, serving as the primary technical point of contact for that facility. You'll operate with a high degree of autonomy — often as a team of one or two — while staying closely integrated with our primary office in Denver, CO for feature development, technical direction, and longer-term project work.

This is not a traditional office role. You must be comfortable owning problems end-to-end without immediate peer support, communicating proactively across time zones, and context-switching between hands-on operational support and collaborative product development.

About the Work
You'll work closely with satellite operators, customers, and the Denver engineering and UI/UX teams to tackle hard problems like:

Collision avoidance, conjunction analysis, and orbit-raising maneuver planning
Operation center failover and continuity of control
Cross-satellite network maintenance and space-to-ground link management
Ground station contact scheduling and pass optimization
Multi-vehicle mission coordination

Your work will be deployed in a MOC where it will directly support active missions in orbit.
Prior space-industry experience is not required.

Position Details

Team structure: Field-based; typically 1–2 engineers on-site, integrated with a remote team of 6–8 developers
Remote Policy: On-Site
Travel: Must be willing and able to travel to Denver, CO for onboarding, training, and periodic team collaboration
On-Call: Must be available for on-call support to serve the MOC local to you

Key Responsibilities

Serve as the primary technical resource for your local MOC, providing direct support to operators and resolving issues with a high degree of independence
Provide on-call support for mission-critical operations by responding to incidents and escalations at your assigned facility
Integrate remotely with the Denver ground software teams for feature development, longer-term technical work, sprint ceremonies, and cross-team coordination
Develop key user-facing features to support both current and future missions using TypeScript, React, C#, MSSQL, InfluxDB, Kafka, and Python
Translate designs and requirements into high-quality, maintainable code
Build reusable components, shared libraries, and scalable services for use across the platform
Engineer algorithms and business logic to promote scalability and automation
Write unit and integration tests, including tests against simulation tools to validate behavior against realistic mission scenarios
Write documentation for internal users and customers

Team Leadership

Act as the technical face of the engineering team at your local site, building strong relationships with operators and customers
Mentor junior engineers (on-site or remote) through code reviews, pair programming, and design discussions
Contribute to sprint planning, technical scoping, and cross-team alignment with the distributed engineering organization
Communicate proactively and clearly with remote teammates. Written communication and async collaboration are essential in this role
Help establish and advocate for engineering best practices across the team

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field
6+ years of full-stack software engineering experience
Active Secret security clearance
Demonstrated ability to work independently with minimal day-to-day supervision and comfort operating as a primary technical resource without immediate peer support
Strong remote collaboration skills with experience working effectively as part of a geographically distributed team, including async communication and documentation habits
Demonstrated ability to independently troubleshoot and resolve deployment failures, runtime issues, and environment-specific defects, including in isolated and/or air-gapped environments without immediate escalation paths
Deep expertise in strongly typed backend languages, particularly C#, including multithreaded applications, concurrency patterns, and near-realtime data handling
Experience designing and consuming REST APIs at scale
Experience with SQL databases, including schema design and query optimization
Experience with Git in a collaborative, multi-contributor environment
Willingness and ability to provide on-call support for operational facilities
Ability to travel to Denver, CO for onboarding, training, and periodic team visits
Strong verbal and written communication skills, including presenting technical concepts to non-technical audiences
Proven ability to thrive in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment with ambiguous requirements

Preferred Qualifications

Eligibility for Top Secret security clearance
Proficiency in modern React and its core principles, including component architecture and performance optimization
Proficiency with common front-end tooling such as Yarn, Babel, or Material-UI
Experience working across a polyglot stack including Python, Kafka, and InfluxDB
Experience with modern state management tools such as TanStack Query
Experience designing and executing forward and backward compatible database migrations and deployment strategies in live production environments
Experience with feature flagging strategies, including gradual rollouts, environment-based toggles, and flag lifecycle management
Experience with container-based installation and deployment strategies, including Docker and CI/CD pipeline integration