Flight Dynamics Software Engineer Loft Orbital
Standardized satellite platform for fast and reliable low Earth orbit missions.
Permanent
Toulouse
No remote
Salary: Not specified
Skills we're looking for
Teamwork
Communication skills
Collaboration and teamwork
Slack
Python
You'll be part of
303 employees
Aeronautics / Space
Founded in 2017
65%
35%
We’re Making Space Simple: Loft is a space infrastructure company that provides simple, fast, and reliable ways to deploy missions to low Earth orbit.
We have developed a standardized satellite platform that can be configured to fly any customer mission. With our own hardware and software abstraction layers on top of a commodity satellite bus, our platform is truly turnkey and plug-and-play.
Loft offers our customers unbeatable speed-to-orbit by removing the non-recurring engineering that is the root cause of schedule unpredictability and cost overruns. We bypass typical aerospace lead times by maintaining an inventory of fully assembled satellite platforms at our Integration and Test facility in Golden, CO.
Loft handles all elements of the process of deploying and operating space infrastructure on the customer’s behalf, so that customers can focus their time and resources entirely on their mission.
You'll be working on
Wanna join the adventure?
Loft Orbital is looking for a Flight Dynamics Software Engineer to join the Ground Platform organization.
You'll work on a small and driven team, developing our flight dynamics software stack so that it can:
- Scale to fly 50+ satellites in orbit in a highly automated, reliable, and safe (from a collision avoidance perspective) manner
- Enable new conops and customer missions with demanding orbit determination, stationkeeping, and attitude performance requirements
We're looking for someone with a solid theoretical understanding of astrodynamics, operational flight-dynamics experience, and software-engineering foundations. If you enjoy solving hard problems and working in a fast-paced and supportive environment, we'd love to hear from you.
We’re hiring for one position across multiple locations - you only need to apply once.
About this role:
- Implement and improve upon algorithms for orbit determination, orbit propagation, maneuver planning (stationkeeping/orbit transfer), conjunction assessment, collision avoidance, and attitude modeling, contributing to our open-source astrodynamics tooling that powers both flight operations and simulation work across the company
- Develop and maintain the in-house flight dynamics ground software backend applications that compute, store, and serve our fleet’s ephemerides, maneuvers, conjunctions, target orbits, etc
- Interface with systems and mission engineers to help translate technical mission requirements and customer demands into operational outcomes in orbit
- Support satellite operations engineers by providing astrodynamics expertise during LEOP/anomalies/conjunction response and assisting with configuring our software stack for various customer missions
- Bachelor's degree in physics or an engineering discipline
- Deep technical understanding of some of the following topics: orbital mechanics, state estimation, spacecraft maneuver planning, conjunction assessment, and spacecraft attitude modeling
- Fundamentals of numerical methods: solvers, optimization, and simulation techniques
- Experience with designing and developing software libraries and backend services, in Python
- Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
- Master’s degree in physics or an engineering discipline
- Proficiency in astrodynamics tools such as STK, Astrogator, GMAT, OreKit, Monte, Copernicus, OpenSpaceToolkit, or equivalent
- Demonstrated practical experience in spacecraft constellation flight dynamics operations
- Demonstrated practical experience building high-performance backend software applications and/or libraries
- Capable of solving complex problems within a highly collaborative environment
- 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
Benefits
Key figures
In short
Founding year
2017
Employees
303
Gender
35%
65%