Mission Operations Ground Systems and Software Engineer , Space Sciences Laboratory

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The Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) is an Organized Research Unit (ORU) of the Berkeley campus reporting to the Vice Chancellor for Research. SSL's primary goal is to foster research in space‑related sciences and to provide education for the next generation of space scientists. Research at SSL, led by Berkeley faculty and SSL Senior Fellows, focuses on experiments and observations carried out in space as well as theoretical and basic research.

Create and help maintain the full stack of Mission Operations Software used by the Mission Operations Team at the UC Space Sciences Lab. Our team currently controls 9 spacecraft in orbit including Low Earth, Lunar, Heliocentric, and Mars orbits. The position requires a highly motivated and independent software engineer that wants be part of an innovative and agile team that has demonstrated it can do more, faster and more cost effectively, than just about any team currently involved in space missions.

We are looking for someone with an eye for design that is interested in UX/UI, as much as in the back end. We have multiple more funded missions coming up that will need support.

This job is to help us understand and visualize space mission engineering and science data.

The First Review Date for this job is: 12/15/2025.

• Lead discussions to translate operator and scientist requirements into an executable software implementation plan.
• Under general supervision, design and prepare Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) and other software tools for our operators to use to evaluate telemetry and interact with engineering test or flight articles or spacecraft.
• Under general supervision, work to improve or augment existing software products used by our Mission Operations Team.
• Present interfaces to senior staff internal to the SSL as well as external customers.
• Independently research and design software capabilities for the team without requirements, based purely to innovate based on predicting where the team is headed.
• Other duties as assigned.

• Relevant experience with JavaScript and an additional backend language (Python, Go, SQL, etc.).
• Previous experience AND interest with UI/UX and frontend tech stack (e.g., React, HTML, CSS, Vue, Angular, Alpine, Svelte, Lit Element, etc.).
• Demonstrated experience with client and server interactions (HTTP protocol + REST API).
• Previous experience with time series databases (e.g., Influx
  
  DB).
• Previous experience with dashboard (data visualization) services like Grafana.
• Bachelor's degree in related area and/or equivalent experience/training.

• Demonstrated Interest in aerospace topics, especially mission operations.

For information on the comprehensive benefits package…