Spire is making a fundamental shift in how it operates its constellation. We are moving from a model where trained operators watch dashboards and escalate to experts, to one where the system is fully autonomous, self-healing, and data intelligent. This Director will lead that transformation. You will set the technical vision, define the architecture, build and inspire the team, and personally raise the standard for what modern space operations look like. 

The old model relies on operators, escalations, manual processes, and institutional knowledge locked in the heads of a few experts. It does not scale and it does not belong in a modern space company. We know what we want to replace it with: SRE principles applied to a constellation, autonomous fault handling, AI-driven anomaly detection, low toil, high data quality, and continuous improvement baked into the system. 

What This Role Is Not: 

This is not a role for someone who wants to graduate out of technical work. If your ideal week is back-to-back 1:1s, sprint ceremonies, and stakeholder syncs, this is not the right fit. We need a director who writes code, reviews architecture, challenges technical decisions, and earns the team's respect through demonstrated craft and not just tenure or title. 

What You Will Work On: 

Technical Leadership 

• Define and own the technical roadmap for autonomous constellation operations
• Set the architectural direction for the data platform, reliability systems, and automation infrastructure
• Stay hands-on: review code, prototype solutions, and get into the details when it matters
• Establish engineering standards across code quality, system design, testing, and observability, and hold the team to them
• Be the person engineers come to when the problem is genuinely hard

Team Building & Culture 

• Recruit, develop, and retain a team of 6 to 10 world-class reliability and platform engineers
• Set the pace, tone, and ambition for the team and make being on it feel like a privilege
• Create an environment where engineers grow fast, own their work, and ship things they are proud of
• Identify gaps and level up engineers through mentorship and not just management

Operational Transformation 

• Lead the shift from manual, operator-driven processes to fully automated and self-healing operations
• Define and drive toward SLOs, error budgets, and reliability targets for the constellation
• Partner with satellite operations and mission teams to translate pain into software solutions

Cross-Functional Influence 

• Be the technical voice of the team in company-wide conversations about architecture, infrastructure, and platform strategy
• Influence how Spire thinks about automation, data, and AI/ML across the broader engineering organization

Basic Qualifications: 

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 in a technical leadership or staff-level individual contributor role
• Demonstrated track record building and shipping reliable production systems at scale. You have owned things that could not go down.
• Deep technical credibility. Engineers on your teams have respected your judgment and not just your title.
• Experience with SRE principles, reliability engineering, or large-scale automation. You have reduced toil systematically and not just complained about it.
• Strong foundation in Python, distributed systems, data platforms, and cloud infrastructure
• Experience hiring and developing engineers. You know what great looks like and how to find it.
• The communication and influence skills to drive technical decisions across teams you do not directly control

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience applying AI/ML or advanced analytics to operational or monitoring problems
• Experience writing performance software in Rust
• Background in space systems, aerospace, or highly constrained real-time environments
• Experience building data lakes, telemetry platforms, or observability infrastructure at scale
• A history of leading teams through technical transformations and not just maintaining the status quo

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. _#LI-MK1

Spire is making a fundamental shift in how it operates its constellation. We are moving from a model where trained operators watch dashboards and escalate to experts, to one where the system is fully autonomous, self-healing, and data intelligent. This Director will lead that transformation. You will set the technical vision, define the architecture, build and inspire the team, and personally raise the standard for what modern space operations look like. 

The old model relies on operators, escalations, manual processes, and institutional knowledge locked in the heads of a few experts. It does not scale and it does not belong in a modern space company. We know what we want to replace it with: SRE principles applied to a constellation, autonomous fault handling, AI-driven anomaly detection, low toil, high data quality, and continuous improvement baked into the system. 

What This Role Is Not: 

This is not a role for someone who wants to graduate out of technical work. If your ideal week is back-to-back 1:1s, sprint ceremonies, and stakeholder syncs, this is not the right fit. We need a director who writes code, reviews architecture, challenges technical decisions, and earns the team's respect through demonstrated craft and not just tenure or title. 

What You Will Work On: 

Technical Leadership 

• Define and own the technical roadmap for autonomous constellation operations
• Set the architectural direction for the data platform, reliability systems, and automation infrastructure
• Stay hands-on: review code, prototype solutions, and get into the details when it matters
• Establish engineering standards across code quality, system design, testing, and observability, and hold the team to them
• Be the person engineers come to when the problem is genuinely hard

Team Building & Culture 

• Recruit, develop, and retain a team of 6 to 10 world-class reliability and platform engineers
• Set the pace, tone, and ambition for the team and make being on it feel like a privilege
• Create an environment where engineers grow fast, own their work, and ship things they are proud of
• Identify gaps and level up engineers through mentorship and not just management

Operational Transformation 

• Lead the shift from manual, operator-driven processes to fully automated and self-healing operations
• Define and drive toward SLOs, error budgets, and reliability targets for the constellation
• Partner with satellite operations and mission teams to translate pain into software solutions

Cross-Functional Influence 

• Be the technical voice of the team in company-wide conversations about architecture, infrastructure, and platform strategy
• Influence how Spire thinks about automation, data, and AI/ML across the broader engineering organization

Basic Qualifications: 

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 in a technical leadership or staff-level individual contributor role
• Demonstrated track record building and shipping reliable production systems at scale. You have owned things that could not go down.
• Deep technical credibility. Engineers on your teams have respected your judgment and not just your title.
• Experience with SRE principles, reliability engineering, or large-scale automation. You have reduced toil systematically and not just complained about it.
• Strong foundation in Python, distributed systems, data platforms, and cloud infrastructure
• Experience hiring and developing engineers. You know what great looks like and how to find it.
• The communication and influence skills to drive technical decisions across teams you do not directly control

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience applying AI/ML or advanced analytics to operational or monitoring problems
• Experience writing performance software in Rust
• Background in space systems, aerospace, or highly constrained real-time environments
• Experience building data lakes, telemetry platforms, or observability infrastructure at scale
• A history of leading teams through technical transformations and not just maintaining the status quo

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. _#LI-MK1

We are seeking an experienced Embedded Software Engineer (Rust) to join our Platform team (folks looking after the spacecraft). The successful candidate will play a crucial role in developing software for our satellite systems, contributing to the expansion and enhancement of our space-based data collection capabilities.

Ideal candidates will embrace the commercialization of nanosatellite systems and adapt to low-cost, fast-paced systems design, development, and implementation methodologies that set Spire apart from our competition. In this fast-paced environment, the design to launch cycle is measured in weeks and months, not years!

What You’ll Do as a Spacecraft Embedded Software Engineer:

• Develop daemons in Rust that interface with embedded systems using low- level protocols
• Implement communication interfaces between embedded systems and higher-level processes
• Integrate C code for specific hardware interfaces
• Contribute to the design and implementation of fault-tolerant systems
• Collaborate closely with the Electrical Engineering team to ensure optimal software-hardware integration
• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for APIs and system architectures
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of our development processes and tools

Key Skills:

• Proven experience in embedded systems development using Rust
• Knowledge of or adaptability to Linux-based development (Ubuntu) 
• Proficiency in integrating C code with Rust projects
• Experience with real-time communication protocols
• Experience with inter-process communication protocols
• Understanding of electronics and ability to communicate effectively with hardware engineers
• Excellent documentation skills

Preferred Skills: 

• Familiarity with safety-critical embedded systems in any industry
• Experience with Yocto for embedded systems
• Knowledge of version control systems, particularly Git and GitHub
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines
• Experience with project management tools
• Proficiency in scripting languages like Python and Bash
• Understanding of cybersecurity principles for embedded systems
• Knowledge of telemetry and command systems
• Experience with formal verification methods for critical software components
• Experience in implementing Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery (FDIR) systems for embedded applications

Tools and Technologies: Rust, C | Scripting languages (Bash/Python) | Ubuntu (development environment)  | Yocto (target environment) | Version control using Git

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. #LI-RK1

We are seeking an experienced Embedded Software Engineer (Rust) to join our Platform team (folks looking after the spacecraft). The successful candidate will play a crucial role in developing software for our satellite systems, contributing to the expansion and enhancement of our space-based data collection capabilities.

Ideal candidates will embrace the commercialization of nanosatellite systems and adapt to low-cost, fast-paced systems design, development, and implementation methodologies that set Spire apart from our competition. In this fast-paced environment, the design to launch cycle is measured in weeks and months, not years!

What You’ll Do as a Spacecraft Embedded Software Engineer:

• Develop daemons in Rust that interface with embedded systems using low- level protocols
• Implement communication interfaces between embedded systems and higher-level processes
• Integrate C code for specific hardware interfaces
• Contribute to the design and implementation of fault-tolerant systems
• Collaborate closely with the Electrical Engineering team to ensure optimal software-hardware integration
• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for APIs and system architectures
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of our development processes and tools

Key Skills:

• Proven experience in embedded systems development using Rust
• Knowledge of or adaptability to Linux-based development (Ubuntu) 
• Proficiency in integrating C code with Rust projects
• Experience with real-time communication protocols
• Experience with inter-process communication protocols
• Understanding of electronics and ability to communicate effectively with hardware engineers
• Excellent documentation skills

Preferred Skills: 

• Familiarity with safety-critical embedded systems in any industry
• Experience with Yocto for embedded systems
• Knowledge of version control systems, particularly Git and GitHub
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines
• Experience with project management tools
• Proficiency in scripting languages like Python and Bash
• Understanding of cybersecurity principles for embedded systems
• Knowledge of telemetry and command systems
• Experience with formal verification methods for critical software components
• Experience in implementing Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery (FDIR) systems for embedded applications

Tools and Technologies: Rust, C | Scripting languages (Bash/Python) | Ubuntu (development environment)  | Yocto (target environment) | Version control using Git

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. #LI-RK1

We are seeking an experienced Embedded Software Engineer to join our Platform team supporting Spacecraft Operations. The successful candidate will play a crucial role in supporting other disciplines by focusing on the embedded software aspects of our satellite systems. The Platform team interfaces directly with many engineering groups to conduct R&D, design, manufacturing, and operations activities, ultimately ensuring all current and future spacecraft systems satisfy their mission.

Ideal candidates will embrace the commercialization of nanosatellite systems and adapt to low-cost, fast-paced systems design, development, and implementation methodologies that set Spire apart from our competition. In this fast-paced environment, the design to launch cycle is measured in weeks and months, not years!

What You’ll Do as a Senior Embedded Software Engineer:

• Design, implement and test, deploy and maintain embedded firmware
• Collaborate with other engineering functions on scoping, architecture and system design
• Resolve on-orbit and on-ground issues related to embedded systems
• Implement, optimize and maintain various serial protocols
• Design and develop interface tools to improve abstraction between the embedded system and other satellite components 
• Debug and resolve complex embedded systems issues in a timely manner
• Write and maintain technical documentation

Key Skills: 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field
• Mastery of Embedded C programming language
• Proficiency with scripting languages like Python and Bash
• Extensive experience with real-time operating systems (RTOS), specifically FreeRTOS
• Familiarity with serial protocols and implementations
• Strong problem-solving skills, particularly in debugging embedded systems
• Experience with version control systems (e.g., Git)
• Experience developing on Linux (Ubuntu)
• A base level of mathematical knowledge (engineering mathematic or similar)
• Excellent communication and teamwork abilities

Preferred Skills: 

• Experience with space systems or satellite technology
• Familiarity working to coding standards and using static analysis tools
• Experience writing Rust for resource constrained environments (embedded Linux)
• Experience with embedded Linux
• Knowledge of control systems and algorithms

Tools and Technologies:

• FreeRTOS for real-time operating system implementation
• GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain for code compilation
• GDB for debugging, complemented by extensive use of serial and/or CAN debugging
• Experience with debugging techniques for systems without JTAG access, particularly for remote issue resolution
• Familiarity with manual testing procedures for embedded interface code
• Experience working with Arm Cortex Microcontrollers
• Version control using Git

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. #LI-RK1

We are seeking an experienced Embedded Linux/Software Engineer to join our Platform team (folks looking after the spacecraft). The successful candidate will play a crucial role in developing software for our satellite systems, contributing to the expansion and enhancement of our space-based data collection capabilities. Ideal candidates will embrace the commercialization of nanosatellite systems and adapt to low-cost, fast-paced systems design, development, and implementation methodologies that set Spire apart from our competition. In this fast-paced environment, the design to launch cycle is measured in weeks and months, not years!

What You’ll Do as a Embedded Linux/Software Engineer:

• Maintain and develop daemons that interface with embedded systems using low-level protocols and higher-level protocols for business logic
• Implement communication interfaces between embedded systems and higher-level processes
• Integrate C libraries for specific hardware interfaces
• Contribute to the design and implementation of fault-tolerant systems
• Collaborate closely with the Electrical Engineering team to ensure optimal software-hardware integration
• Spin up new designs and maintain existing products with Yocto - focused on
• Xilinx MPSoC systems, but we also support number of other systems

Key Skills:

• C/C++, Bash and Python
• Proficiency working with the Yocto framework: (for application design and base OS modifications including kernel modules)
• Knowledge of a Linux-based development environment (Ubuntu)
• Experience with real-time communication protocols (low level: CAN/UART/SPI/I2C)
• Experience with inter-process communication protocols (higher level mostly IP based)
• Understanding of electronics and ability to communicate effectively with hardware engineers (especially for board bring up and test)
• Excellent documentation skills Preferred Skills: Working knowledge or Rust would be a bonus
• Familiarity with safety-critical embedded systems in any industry
• Knowledge of version control systems, particularly Git and GitHub
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines
• Experience with project management tools
• Understanding of cybersecurity principles for embedded systems
• Knowledge of telemetry and command systems
• Experience with formal verification methods for critical software components
• Experience in implementing Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery (FDIR) systems for embedded applications Tools and Technologies: · C, C++
• Scripting languages (Bash/Python)
• Yocto, Bitbake
• Ubuntu (development environment)
• Version control using Git We value adaptability and a willingness to learn new tools and technologies as needed for the role.

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. #LI-MI

We are seeking a mid- level Software Engineer to join a team responsible for designing the tools used to test satellites. The successful candidate will play a crucial role in developing software for our satellite systems, contributing to the expansion and enhancement of our space-based data collection capabilities. Ideal candidates will embrace the commercialization of nanosatellite systems and adapt to low-cost, fast-paced systems design, development, and implementation methodologies that set Spire apart from our competition. In this fast-paced environment, the design to launch cycle is measured in weeks and months, not years!

What You’ll Do as a Software Engineer

• Core systems: Designing and developing code used to fully test our satellites. Making improvements to our existing codebase to enhance functionality, usability, robustness, performance, writing and testing new code to integrate
• Supporting the Manufacturing team with any software test requests that occur during the production life of a satellite. This will also cover any software escalations the manufacturing team may occur during their testing.
• Satellite application platform: Writing tests for the automated execution of tasks on the satellite to meet manufacturing requirements or changing testing needs.
• Actively contributing to design architecture, efficient refactoring and redesigning of existing software products
• Collaborate closely with the other Engineering teams to ensure optimal software-hardware integration
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of our development processes and tools
• Act as a team lead to junior engineers, mentoring, guiding and promoting best coding practices.
• Maintain our internal web tool (Flask)

Key Skills:

• Proven experience in development using Python (at least 2 years)
• Knowledge of or adaptability to Linux-based development (Ubuntu)
• Excellent problem-solving and documentation skills
• Experienced in debugging and peer reviewing
• Knowledge of version control systems, particularly Git and GitHub

Preferred Skills: 

• Experience with Rust would be beneficial
• Pytest for unit testing
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines
• Experience with project management tools
• Proficiency in scripting languages like Bash

Tools and Technologies:

• Python
• Pytest
• Scripting languages (Bash)
• Ubuntu (development environment)
• Version control using Git
• Rust would be an excellent competitive advantage
• Flask We value adaptability and a willingness to learn new tools and technologies as needed for the role.

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. #LI-MI