Senior Software Engineering - Communications

Northwood is on a mission to transform connectivity between Earth and space, bringing the benefits of space to the masses through innovations in space communications technologies. If you're passionate about building quickly and seeing your work deployed globally with real impact, we want you at Northwood.

As a Software Engineer at Northwood, you will be pivotal in designing, implementing, and optimizing the global service that delivers connectivity to our customers. You will have ownership over key areas - ranging from control of our antenna systems to the customer APIs that enable booking time on our network. Cloud orchestration & distributed systems design

Lead the end-to-end architecture of a global, distributed control plane that schedules hundreds of satellite passes per hour across mixed AWS/on-prem nodes

API, database & front end development

Build and own customer-facing and internal control-plane APIs - craft, version, and operate the endpoints that let users search, reserve, update, and cancel satellite passes at multi-thousand-request scale

Design and implement the underlying workflow-orchestrator that coordinates satellite communications across sites, reconciles conflicts, and enables autonomous coordination across the worlds largest ground network

Architect the real-time TT&C / data-transfer interfaces - deliver a secure, bidirectional streaming channel that carries command uplink, telemetry downlink, and supports near-real-time data delivery across Northwood’s global ground network.

Design and implement control systems for our ground station hardware, you will write software that interacts with everything from embedded systems to RF modems

High bandwidth data movement

Architect and optimize data pipelines for efficient movement of data between ground stations and various end environments

Architect a Tbps-class SD-WAN overlay (WireGuard + QUIC) that transparently shifts traffic between sites, S3-compatible buckets and customer VPCs, with per-flow QoS and FEC.

Monitoring & alerting systems

Create comprehensive monitoring and alerting solutions for software and infrastructure

Transform our telemetry data into actionable insights, enabling predictive diagnostics to address issues before they arise; keep our customers informed about relevant operations in real time

Infrastructure, security & pipelines

A global network requires global deployments, and Northwood is committed to building a secure, reliable, and stable pipeline. This infrastructure empowers our developers to deploy changes continuously—without the risk of disrupting the system or relying on 'testing in prod.'

Production line software & testing

Develop software for production line bring-up and testing

Automate testing procedures to ensure hardware and software reliability

Working alongside mechanical/RF/EE/FPGA and SW engineers to ensure system correctness, performance, and reliability before leaving our manufacturing line

Simulation & orchestration software

Create simulations that model satellite and network design

Create simulation tools for testing and validating system performance

Design and implement software that orchestrates our global antenna network and data plane

5-7+ years of professional software development experience (this doesn’t have to be from a full-time role—there are many ways to gain valuable experience, and we’d love to hear about yours - tell us about internships, projects out of the classroom, or any personal projects)

Completed bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Math or other related major (soft-requirement, tell us why you didn't pursue a degree, and what you've done in it's place)

While we don’t expect you to have every skill listed below, we do expect you to take ownership of one or more areas and drive decisions and implementations where your strengths lie.

Programming Languages (General):

Rust, Golang, C/C++

Open to other languages that are suitable for distributed systems and/or high-performance computing and interested in strong opinions on the right language for various applications

Excellent communication and collaboration skills

Distributed Systems & Cloud Computing:

Knowledge of cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and orchestration tools

Hardware Interaction & FPGA:

Familiarity with FPGA programming and orchestration

Data Movement & Networking:

Proficiency in architecting data pipelines for high-throughput environments

Understanding of network programming and IP protocols

Experience with high-speed communications (10GigE+)

API & Front-End Development:

Experience in building RESTful APIs

Proficiency with front-end technologies:

JavaScript/TypeScript

Frameworks: Angular, React, or similar.

Knowledge of UI/UX best practices

Monitoring & Alerting Tools:

Experience with monitoring solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack)

Experience managing CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD)

Databases & Data Processing:

Experience with time-series databases (InfluxDB, TimescaleDB)

Proficiency with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL)

Knowledge of data processing frameworks

Experience designing/implementing simulations for physical models (think satellite orbits) or network movement

Experience designing/implementing orchestration engines for distributed nodes (think robotics, long running jobs, data pipelines, etc…)

Testing & Automation:

Experience with automated testing frameworks

Familiarity with production line testing software

Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), you must be:

S. citizen or lawful permanent resident of the U.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.

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