Embedded Software Engineer

Loft Orbital's mission is to make space simple for organizations that need to collect information about the Earth. We operate rideshare satellites where multiple customer sensors are flown on a single spacecraft platform.

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 reach a cadence of quarterly launches.

Following our recent $13M Series A funding round, we set up a European office in Toulouse in order to develop key technologies such as a digital platform for better designing, integrating, and operating satellites in orbit.

As a member of the new R&D center in Toulouse and of the Payload Data Processing Unit (PDPU) team, you will be helping build technology that empowers our customers to process payload data onboard Loft’s satellite missions. With this ‘edge computing in space’ capability, Loft’s customers can react in real time to the data collected by their payload.

Since high flexibility and versatility play an important role, the PDPU is software-centric and supports on-ground and in-space re-programmability. Loft Orbital will be utilizing the latest technology available for the PDPU, which includes a mix of existing and next-generation component and processor technology.

General Requirement

• Scrappy and inventive: what you will be building has never been done before
• Prepared to be challenged and sometimes work out of your comfort zone
• Willingness to be accountable, autonomous, and take full ownership of projects
• Preferably experience with software/firmware developed for safety-critical applications or software developed for aerospace
• Awareness and understanding of mission-critical systems and related software impact
• A preference for agile yet process-controlled software development
• Ability to code and document (wherever possible electronically and in-line) in a structured way
• Ability to work both independently as well as part of a multi-disciplinary team
• Ability to learn and adopt to new technologies
• Demonstrable history of thinking outside-the-box, without losing sight of reality
• Experience working in both a Windows and Linux environment

Embedded Software Experience

• Extensive experience in C and C++ and preferably one other structured language (non-scripted)
• Experience with Real Time Operating System (RTOS) and time-critical software development
• Experience with Single Event Upset (SEU) mitigation mechanisms
• Experience with local and remote debugging concepts and tools
• Preferably experience with hypervisor and/or container virtualization techniques
• Experience in developing software for RTOS and embedded applications
• Experience with hardware interfacing
• Preferably experience in device driver and BSP development
• In-depth knowledge of different processor technologies such as: ARM, PPC, LEON, OpenRISC, SoC processors
• Affection with upcoming processor technologies such as GPGPU / MPPs
• Preferably knowledge and understanding of MPP/GPU processors and related development (CUDA / OpenCL)