Backend Systems Engineer

Location: Hybrid, with two days per week in an office in Arvada, Colorado, Washington, D.C., or Seattle, Washington

Salary: $155,000–$190,000 per year, plus equity

Company

hirify.global provides a platform for operating heterogeneous satellite constellations and simplifying spacecraft operations.

What you will do

• Develop backend command-and-control software connecting the platform to satellite vehicles.
• Implement machine-to-machine communications involving binary protocols, command and telemetry definitions, data transport, serialization, encoding, and stateful communication.
• Onboard satellite vehicles by translating spacecraft-specific interfaces and protocols into reliable platform integrations.
• Build reusable abstractions, tooling, and architecture for supporting multiple spacecraft, protocols, and missions.
• Design systems that handle unreliable connectivity, bandwidth constraints, latency, retries, fault handling, and observability.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams and communicate complex technical information to internal and customer-facing audiences.

Requirements

• Professional proficiency in backend or systems programming with Python and Rust.
• At least 3 years of experience developing software for satellite C2, telecommunications, networking, robotics, embedded systems, industrial automation, IoT, defense, or similarly complex machine-to-machine systems.
• Experience implementing or integrating communication protocols with serialization, framing, packetization, routing, sequencing, acknowledgements, error handling, and state management.
• Experience taking a protocol, interface specification, or hardware integration from documentation through implementation, testing, troubleshooting, and production operation.
• Strong systems thinking, technical analysis, troubleshooting, communication, maintainability, resilience, observability, and performance skills.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to have

• Experience with CCSDS, CSP, CFDP, IP, XTCE, MIB, or comparable communication standards and interface definitions.
• Experience integrating AES-256 GCM, AES-256 CFB, AES-256 ECB, NSA Type 1 PEGASUS, or NSA Type 1 CARIBOU encryption algorithms.
• Experience with Kubernetes, DevSecOps, relational or time-series databases, GitHub workflows, or open-source software.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work model combining in-person collaboration with significant remote flexibility.
• Opportunity to apply experience from telecommunications, networking, robotics, industrial automation, IoT, defense, or other complex systems to spacecraft operations.
• Work on software supporting a wide variety of satellite missions and spacecraft interfaces.
• Compensation includes equity.