Staff Ground Software Engineer

Turion is developing the critical infrastructure of the space economy. We’re doing this by building vertically integrated hardware and software: DROID, our line of space vehicles, and Starfire, our software suite covering simulation, modeling, planning, and operations.
We’re a group of people who fell in love with the future sci-fi promised us, and we’re building it into reality. We build hard things. We build them well. And we’re just getting started.

As a Staff Ground Software Engineer, you will play a key role in defining, designing, and building the next generation of Mission Control systems that spacecraft operators rely on every day. These systems enable teams to command real satellites, process high-volume downlinks from orbit, and make split-second decisions that directly impact missions worth millions of dollars and hardware traveling at over 17,500 mph.

In this role, you will work across the full software lifecycle: shaping overall architecture, setting technical direction, building core services, and mentoring engineers as we scale our capabilities. You will tackle some of the hardest challenges in modern distributed systems, including:

• Scale: designing systems that handle massive telemetry streams, high throughput, and globally distributed operations.

• Speed: optimizing end-to-end latency so operators can react to spacecraft events in real time.

• Availability: ensuring mission-critical services remain resilient, fault tolerant, and highly reliable under all conditions.

• Observability: building the tools, metrics, and instrumentation that give operators and engineers deep insight into system behavior.

• Security: protecting command paths, data flows, and operational workflows against evolving threats in a domain where safety and integrity are paramount.

You will collaborate closely with mission operators, flight software engineers, and cross-functional teams to ensure our ground systems are intuitive, robust, and ready for missions of increasing complexity. As a senior technical leader, you will help set best practices, elevate engineering quality, and contribute to a culture of innovation and operational excellence.
This is a full-time, exempt position based on-site at our office in Irvine, California.

• Architect an industry scale platform for the future of spacecraft operations

• Build real-time systems that visualize satellite constellations, predict orbital mechanics, and automate complex mission sequences

• Create interfaces that let operators control multiple spacecraft simultaneously with the ease of managing cloud infrastructure

• Build reusable modules and platform capabilities that scale across multiple customer missions

• Evolve Turion’s systems from internal tools into industry-defining products used by government and commercial partners.

• Architect uplink/downlink processing systems that handle terabytes of data daily

• Create the infrastructure for mission planning across constellations—coordinating Earth observation, non-Earth imaging, and communications satellites

• Build intuitive product workflows that scale from a single spacecraft to multi-orbit fleets, we will be the platform every space company will use to operate their missions

• Lead the software engineering process from concept to orbit-ready systems, setting technical direction for products that operate spacecraft

• Mentor and guide teams of engineers building some of the most complex software on (and off) Earth

• Engage with satellite operators and mission planners to understand their needs, turning space operations challenges into elegant software solutions

• Architect mission-critical systems including next-gen Mission Control, Autonomy platforms, AI/ML integrations, & data pipelines

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Astrodynamics, Flight Software, Hardware, AI/ML researchers, and spacecraft operators

• Drive architectural decisions for systems that must be more reliable than traditional tech—there's no re-deploying a satellite

• Deliver solutions that simplify space operations, making controlling satellites as intuitive as…