Your space-enabled career begins here

About Northwood:

Northwood is on a mission to transform connectivity between earth and space and bring the benefits of space to the masses through innovations in space communications technologies. If you like building quickly and seeing your work deployed in locations around the globe with real impact, we want you at Northwood.

Job Level: The level of this position will be determined based on the qualifications and experience of the successful candidate. We are open to considering candidates of varying experience levels, from mid-career to principal engineers.

Role:

Northwood is looking for a Software Engineer to join our team in our El Segundo office. As a Software Engineer at Northwood, you will play a pivotal role in designing, implementing, and optimizing data and control plane functionalities within our global ground station network infrastructure. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams as well as customers to develop innovative solutions that enable reliable, efficient, simple, and available systems. Your expertise in reliable, scalable, and easy to use systems will be essential in achieving our goals

Responsibilities: We are seeking a Software Engineer to support the design and development of Northwoods' control and data planes - spanning on-prem and cloud environments. In this role you will

• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to design and implement Northwood's control and data planes, ensuring seamless integration across on-premises and cloud environments, emphasizing low latency and high throughput data distribution.

• Develop, test, deploy, and maintain applications essential to the ground service, including APIs, services for spacecraft communication, and data processing pipelines capable of managing gigabits of data per second.

• Create a comprehensive monitoring solution to ensure the continuous uptime of Northwood's hardware and software systems.

• Work closely with software, network, and FPGA engineers to design Northwood's hybrid network and software deployments, optimizing performance and scalability.

• Engage with customers to establish interfaces and infrastructure that enable both Telemetry, Tracking, and Control (TT&C) and Payload downlink at scale.

Experience: Candidates should possess some or all of the following qualifications:

• 6+ years of non-internship professional software development experience

• 3+ years of industry experience in architecting and scaling systems

• 5+ years of programming with at least one software programming language experience

  • Preferred Programming Languages:

    • Python

    • C/C++

    • Rust

    • Any other language suitable for distributed systems development and high-performance computing.

• Experience in of leading design or architecture (design patterns, reliability, and scaling) of new and existing systems

Nice to haves:

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code

• Several years of professional experience with continuous integration, and deployment and related technologies (Docker, Terraform, Vault, etc…)

• Several years of experience with cloud infrastructure - AWS, Azure or Google Cloud

• Experience in high speed communications (10GigE+)

• Experience in network programming and understanding of the IP protocols

• Full-stack software development experience, including:

  • Backend – Python(FastAPI) and/or Golang

  • Frontend – Typescript and/or Javascript (Angular or React)

  • Database – InfluxDB, PostgreSQL, or equivalent

• Experience with data visualization libraries and tools.

• Background in satellite communications or ground station operations.

• Familiarity with security/ compliance requirements.

• Experience in embedded development (FreeRTOS, Zephyr, etc…)

Compensation and Benefits:

Compensation is determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data. Individual level and base pay is determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on job-related skills, education, experience, and technical capabilities. In addition to base salary, Northwood offers long term incentives such as company stock, stock options, and cash awards, as well as discretionary bonus for performance. Northwood benefits include equity, health care, unlimited vacation, retirement savings and professional development.

Additional Information:

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.


Northwood is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Northwood is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.