Senior Ground Segment Engineer

Senior Ground Segment Engineer

Loft Orbital

Toulouse, France

As a Senior Ground Segment Engineer, you play a pivotal role in building software to operate our fleet of in-orbit satellites, and to prepare for the challenges associated with operating different satellite buses in a variety of configurations. Your expertise will be instrumental in ensuring reliable, efficient, and scalable connectivity between our growing fleet of satellites via both ground stations and inter-satellite links.

You will configure Cockpit, Loft’s mission control system, to expand our ground segment connectivity, working with our ground station providers and the product teams that build Cockpit. You will manage cross-fleet contact allocation and planning, optimizing resource usage to maximize communication opportunities and minimize latency. Work closely with our Space Infrastructure, Spacecraft Deployment, Mission Deployment and Execution, and regulatory teams to manage commissioned satellites and prepare for the commissioning of new ones. This position will also give you the opportunity to become a rotating Flight Director, responsible for the health and safety of our satellite fleet.

About this role:

• Manage architecture for ground station and inter-satellite link (ISL) connectivity solutions.
• Own cross-fleet contact allocation, planning, and satellite connectivity configurations.
• Support satellite operations both in nominal operations and by providing on-call support during commissioning.
• Own our network infrastructure alerting capabilities (ground station availability and anomaly detection, intersatellite link stability, etc.).
• Own ground segment management – project management, cost management, contract management, RF compatibility test management, licensing coordination.
• Own ground segment optimization – both technical performance and financial.
• Own ground segment operation – escalation for ISL or Ground Station issues, serve as point of contact with providers during launch and early operations, commissioning of ISLs, new ground station sites.
• Occasionally test connectivity between Loft’s cloud and network providers, together with our Cloud Infrastructure team.
• Serve as a rotating Flight Director, overseeing incident response and ensuring the health and safety of the fleet.
• Manage RF licensing together with our regulatory team.

Must haves:

• 4-5 years relevant experience.
• RF knowledge sufficient to develop ground station or intersatellite link configurations.
• Protocol knowledge (internet/transport layer): CCSDS (131.0/132.0, 231.0/232.0) and/or ECSS standards, TCP/IP, UDP.
• Licensing knowledge.
• Ability to debug connectivity issues in a complex network environment.
• Experience with Kubernetes (k8s), Docker, Git, Python.
• Willingness and enthusiasm to be trained as a satellite controller and Flight Director (including participation in the on-call rotation).

Nice to haves:

• Having held this type of position in the past.
• Proven experience developing software.