Software Engineer, Operations (Spacecraft Operations)

Location: Long Beach, California, United States. The role includes shift work and on-call availability during critical mission phases, plus occasional travel of less than 10% to partner institutions and mission integration sites.

Salary: $130,000–$196,000 USD annually, plus equity.

Company

hirify.global develops rockets and space systems, including the Terran R launch vehicle and interplanetary science missions.

What you will do

• Design, build, test, and operate spacecraft commanding software for command generation, validation, sequencing, and constraint checking.
• Develop tools for telemetry processing, data dissemination, visualization, anomaly investigation, and mission data pipelines.
• Build automated unit, integration, regression, simulation, flatsat, and hardware-in-the-loop test coverage for mission-critical systems.
• Define and document ICDs, APIs, schemas, protocols, and data formats for instrument teams and external partners.
• Collaborate with mission operations, GN&C, flight software, instrument, ground systems, and external partner teams.
• Use AI-assisted and agentic development tools while rigorously verifying output for mission-critical applications.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of software engineering experience, ideally with mission operations, ground systems, command and control, or other safety- or mission-critical software.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and hands-on proficiency with Python or a comparable language.
• Experience designing automated test suites for complex or safety-critical systems.
• Experience defining or using external-facing interfaces, APIs, ICDs, schemas, or protocol definitions.
• Experience with agentic development tools and the ability to verify their output in mission-critical contexts.

Culture & Benefits

• High-ownership, hands-on work at the intersection of software and spacecraft operations.
• Collaboration with internal engineering teams, operators, instrument teams, and external partners.
• Competitive salary and equity.
• Generous paid time off and sick leave, parental leave, and an annual learning and development stipend.
• Schedule flexibility is required as operational needs evolve.