Ground Software Engineer - Core

Wanna join the adventure? Loft Orbital is looking for a Software Engineer to join our Core team within Ground Platform. The team develops the core capabilities that support Loft's ground platform, improve development workflows, and ensure platform reliability. You'll help build shared services and tools that benefit software teams across Loft. You'll work on backend services, workflow automation, AI tooling, and platform infrastructure, with a focus on observability and reliability. You'll also have the opportunity to take part in spacecraft operations through SatDevOps rotations, helping investigate anomalies and supporting real-time incident response when needed. If you're excited about improving how software is developed across Loft, contributing to key technical decisions, and building more reliable platform systems, we'd love to hear from you. About this role: • Evaluate and implement new technologies and software patterns that propagate to the entire Loft's software stack • Lead the creation and evolution of Loft's AI tooling for development, review, and spacecraft anomaly investigation • Develop central ground platform functionalities such as workflow automation, microservice inter-communication, and metrics • Take responsibility for the reliability and performance of Loft's ground platform infrastructure , including message queues, CI/CD, and observability • Have the opportunity to take part in spacecraft operations through SatDevOps rotations, occasionally helping investigate anomalies and supporting real‑time incident response when needed • Collaborate with software engineers and satellite operators from all over the company to support and foster consistent, maintainable, and performant software solutions Must Haves: • Solid backend software development experience • Hands-on knowledge of deployment and Infrastructure as Code • Ability to define and maintain CI/CD pipelines • Experience working with Kubernetes Nice to Haves: • Python development, particularly with Django • Knowledge of GraphQL and Graphene • Experience with message queues and streaming technologies ( NATS ) • Knowledge of DevOps and observability tools (Helm, Terraform, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Loki, etc) • Familiarity with AI tooling • Frontend development with Vue and Web Components Some of Our Awesome Benefits: • Equity, we want you to have an active role in our success • Up to 35 days of Paid Time Off (vacations & RTT ) and flexible working hours, we want you to be at your best • Health and life insurance, we care about your health • Lunch Vouchers, because let’s be honest, we love food! (we even have a slack channel about it #loft-gourmand ) • Cross-office travel opportunities between San Francisco, Colorado, and Toulouse to learn from our differences • Company and team off-sites and many other events to work & celebrate together • Relocation assistance to Toulouse when applicable * Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented people tend to only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Loft, we value respectful debate and people who aren’t afraid to challenge assumptions. We strongly encourage you to apply, even if you don’t check all the boxes. Who We Are Loft: Space Made Simple. Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable, and simple way to deploy missions in orbit. We integrate, launch, and operate spacecraft, offering end-to-end missions as a service across Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on-orbit AI, national security missions, and more. Leveraging our existing space infrastructure and an extensive inventory of satellite buses, Loft is reducing years-lo