Senior Software Engineer - Test Infrastructure 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
Containerization and orchestration
Teamwork
Technical aptitude
Continuous integration
Network architecture understanding
+11
You'll be part of
303 employees
Aeronautics / Space
Founded in 2017
65%
35%
Loft Orbital was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices in Boulder, Colorado and Toulouse, France. Our mission is to make space simple for our customers: we operate microsatellites and fly customer payloads onboard, as a service. Our standard interface and software products reduce the complexity and shorten the lead time our customers typically face in deploying assets in orbit.
Our unique business model is redefining how businesses and governments access space and use it to collect information and intelligence about the world. We have grown our customer base quickly and have our first two first satellite missions launching in 2020. Soon after, we will offer a regular cadence of quarterly launches.
Following our recent $13M Series A funding round, we established a European office in Toulouse to develop key technologies such as a digital platform for better designing, integrating, and operating satellites in orbit.
You'll be working on
Wanna join the adventure?
At Loft Orbital, we have just successfully launched multiple satellites that we fly and operate ourselves. With these satellites in orbit and a wave of exciting missions launching soon, we are scaling up quickly as a global company.
We are looking for a Test Infrastructure Engineer to join the team building and maintaining Loft’s test infrastructure internationally across our Golden, CO, San Francisco, CA, and Toulouse, France sites.
About this role:
As a Test Infrastructure Engineer, you will primarily help design, develop, and deploy our test infrastructure and the tools for automating both our hardware and software testing, which will help us scale as a company.Sitting between the spacecraft and all the other teams, you will have a big impact in ensuring that every element of our satellite works without any bugs.We are looking for engineers with a product mindset, who have a good understanding of embedded systems, networking, data exchange protocols, and experience with setting up software infrastructures. Additionally, we are looking for someone who is:
- Able to work independently with some guidance. People owning their work is important to us!
- Able to wear multiple hats as needs arise. We are a small company disrupting an entire industry!
- Not afraid to get out of their comfort zone to explore and learn. Technologies are evolving at rapid rates, and we must stay relevant!
Key responsibilities include:
- Design, build, deploy, and maintain high-fidelity Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testbeds that emulate spacecraft systems, sensors, and communication links.
- Design, build, deploy, and maintain Electrical Ground Support Equipment (EGSE) that interfaces with space vehicles under Assembly, Integration & Tests, allowing Validation and Verification of spacecrafts and their software before their launch campaigns.
- Develop tools and frameworks that allow teams to simulate faults, edge cases, and mission scenarios that are difficult or costly to reproduce with physical hardware alone.
- Work closely with systems, software, hardware, and operations teams to understand evolving test requirements and integrate feedback into the platforms.
- Maintain and extend test infrastructure to support continuous integration (CI) pipelines, ensuring every code change is validated with realistic system-level tests.
- Troubleshoot complex system issues spanning software, embedded hardware, networking, and system configuration.
Our culture at Loft Orbital promotes collaboration and ownership among our developers, fostering efforts hand in hand with other teams, internally and externally.
Must Haves:
- Master’s degree in Computer Science or a similar field.
- 2+ years working with Linux systems, including configuration, debugging, and system-level troubleshooting.
- Strong understanding of networking fundamentals (OSI layers, packet analysis, data exchange protocols like TCP/IP and UDP).
- Hands-on experience with embedded systems or low-level hardware (Raspberry Pi, Arduino, microcontrollers, or similar).
- Proficiency in Python (3.9+) for building test automation frameworks, device drivers, or test orchestration tools.
- Experience containerizing applications with Docker.
- Familiarity with at least one modern CI tool (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, Buildkite, CircleCI) and integrating test pipelines.
- Experience designing or automating complex HIL/SIL testbed, signal conditioning, fault injection, or hardware emulation.
- Experience with “Infrastructure-as-Code” systems, specifically NixOS.
- Familiarity with networking simulation tools (e.g., network emulators, virtual switches) for testing data flows under realistic mission constraints.
- Interest or experience with hardware test automation frameworks (e.g., custom Python-based test rigs).
- 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%