Senior Software Engineer, Ground & Control Services

BlackSky is a real-time intelligence company that operates a sophisticated space-based intelligence platform, providing satellite imagery and analytics to various clients. They are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join their Ground & Control team, responsible for developing software that controls and monitors satellite operations. The role involves collaborating with various teams to ensure the safety and efficiency of mission-critical systems.

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and maintain software that enables autonomous satellite operations and real-time tasking
• Develop and integrate services that interface with ground station infrastructure and satellite communication protocols
• Build software solutions to support satellite tasking and monitoring
• Collaborate with operations, communication engineers, flight software engineers, mission planning engineers, and other software teams to understand and refine technical requirements
• Write clean, maintainable code with strong emphasis on safety, test coverage, and reliability
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and team planning discussions
• Support on-call rotations and troubleshooting of live system operations as needed
• Anticipated 10-15% travel required to customer site
• Other job-related duties as assigned

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• A minimum of six (6) years of professional software development experience
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages (e.g. Go, Python, C++)
• Experience developing and deploying microservices in both cloud environments (e.g. AWS, GCS, Azure) and on-premise Kubernetes-based environments
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and modern version control systems (e.g. Git)
• Strong problem-solving skills and an ability to understand complex systems end to end
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills in a cross-functional team environment
• Some of the programs this role supports may require being a US-citizen
• Master's degree (or higher) in a related technical field
• At least eight years of professional software development experience
• Exposure to infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g. Terraform, Ansible) and container orchestration (e.g. Kubernetes, Nomad)
• Understanding of system safety, fault tolerance, and recovery strategies
• Comfort working in high-availability, mission-critical software environments
• Prior experience with satellite operations, ground stations, or others aerospace-related domains (e.g. X-Band, UHF, or telemetry)
• Active secret or higher U.S. security clearance