Ground Software Manager, Spacecraft (Aerospace)

Location: North Austin, Texas, United States. Due to ITAR requirements, candidates must be U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, protected individuals, or eligible to obtain the required U.S. Department of State authorizations.

Company

hirify.global is a space and defense technology company developing launch, lunar, and spacecraft operating systems.

What you will do

• Lead the spacecraft ground software organization supporting spacecraft integration, testing, rehearsals, launch campaigns, commissioning, and on-orbit operations.
• Define the long-term technical vision and enterprise architecture for scalable spacecraft ground software.
• Build, mentor, recruit, and develop a high-performing engineering organization.
• Drive service-oriented, distributed, cloud-enabled, and reusable software platforms across multiple spacecraft programs.
• Oversee the full software lifecycle, including requirements, architecture, implementation, verification, validation, deployment, operations, and sustainment.
• Ensure reliable spacecraft commanding, telemetry processing, mission planning, data processing, visualization, automation, and operator workflows in collaboration with operations, systems engineering, IT, networking, and cybersecurity teams.

Requirements

• BS in computer science, software engineering, aerospace engineering, systems engineering, electrical engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 10+ years of experience delivering software systems for spacecraft, aerospace, defense, robotics, or other mission-critical operational environments.
• 5+ years of engineering management experience with direct responsibility for technical teams.
• Strong experience with software systems engineering, architecture, distributed or microservice-based systems, and complete engineering lifecycles.
• Experience with cloud-based and on-premises deployment architectures and collaboration across software, systems engineering, operations, IT, and cybersecurity.
• Must satisfy U.S. ITAR eligibility requirements.

Nice to have

• Experience with spacecraft ground segments, mission planning, flight dynamics, scheduling, command generation, mission automation, or telemetry processing.
• Familiarity with CCSDS telemetry, telecommand, CFDP, SLE, SDLS, or related spacecraft communications standards.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, streaming data platforms, messaging architectures, or time-series databases.
• National security or classified spacecraft experience, active security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one.

Culture & Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision plans with low deductibles.
• Parental leave and short-term disability coverage.
• Educational reimbursement.
• Flexible PTO options.
• Engineering culture focused on reliability, mission success, safety, collaboration, and continuous improvement.