Engineer, Satellite SDN Control Plane, IRIS2

Location: Betzdorf, Luxembourg; 60% onsite from the office. Travel is required as needed for project realization.

Company

SES is working with consortium partners and core members to build and operate IRIS², a secure European Union multi-orbit satellite communications constellation.

What you will do

• Define SDN control-plane and management-plane requirements for IRIS² and related MEO network capabilities.
• Design control architectures for dynamic topology awareness, path computation, policy enforcement, and service lifecycle management.
• Specify network management, telemetry, configuration, fault-handling, intent/policy, and operational interfaces.
• Dimension control-plane functions for scale, latency, availability, synchronization, and resilience across space and ground infrastructure.
• Prototype routing updates, service provisioning, failure handling, network reconfiguration, and closed-loop optimization workflows.
• Evaluate APIs, data models, SDN controller and orchestration interfaces, and integrate experimental concepts into production-ready platforms with simulation, software, validation, and architecture teams.

Requirements

• Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of relevant industry experience.
• Strong experience with software-defined networking, network management systems, routing control planes, or distributed orchestration systems.
• Solid understanding of routing protocols, path computation, traffic engineering, topology discovery, and network resilience mechanisms.
• Familiarity with YANG, NETCONF, RESTCONF, gNMI, OpenConfig, streaming telemetry, or similar network automation and management technologies.
• Experience with Linux networking, containerized services, Kubernetes, virtualized network functions, and cloud-native operational models.
• Programming skills in Python, Go, C/C++, Rust, or similar languages used for network automation and systems engineering.
• Ability to write technical specifications, interface definitions, design documents, and validation criteria.
• Must be eligible for a “SECRET” security clearance under applicable national regulations and EU/ESA/NATO equivalents.

Nice to have

• Experience with performance analysis, fault injection, lab testing, or simulation of distributed network control systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Permanent employment contract.
• Work in a diverse and equal-opportunity environment.
• Regular office presence is required, with 60% onsite work.
• Project-related travel is required when necessary.