Senior Director, Software Engineering

Capella Space stands at the forefront of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite technology and signal intelligence. We provide customers in governments, academia, and commercial sectors with reliable information that enables unparalleled understanding of the world. Our mission is centered on delivering timely and reliable Earth imagery, supporting diverse applications in defense & intelligence, disaster response, energy, environmental monitoring and more. Utilizing cutting-edge technology, Capella Space designs, manufactures and operates an advanced constellation of SAR imaging satellites. Our market-leading SAR satellites are complemented by an unmatched data infrastructure and automated ordering and delivery platform for fast, reliable insights where and when customers need it most. 

Recognized for our technological prowess, Capella Space was honored as one of the 10 most innovative companies in Space in 2023 by FASTCOMPANY. Capella Space is an internationally trusted Earth Observation data provider, working closely with the U.S. Space Systems Command, U.S. Space Force, NASA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, the Canadian Government and more to make unclassified, high-resolution SAR data more accessible.  

What Makes Capella Unique? 

Capella Space is a highly collaborative team environment, providing an opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in the space industry, though no prior space experience is needed.  We’re looking for people excited about tackling seemingly impossible challenges, learning new skills and concepts, and helping each other achieve success. Our mission and our products are meant to understand the whole world and help everyone in it - regardless of race, creed, or any other distinction. We encourage you to bring your unique perspective to help make us stronger, including applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. 

About the Team 

The Platform Engineering team is responsible for building, maintaining, and improving the software, infrastructure, and systems that operate the Capella constellation. We prepare for satellite launches, maintain spacecraft on-orbit, and develop new capabilities to improve how customers can collect and access Earth imagery. The team’s focus is on software and systems engineering, maintaining and improving a fully-autonomous, rapid-response spacecraft operations system.  

As a senior leader on the Platform Engineering team, you will be interacting daily with other team leads, software engineers, spacecraft operators, satellite engineers, and data product engineers to develop, maintain, and improve the system. You will have a demonstrable track record of working with complex systems, understanding distributed systems architecture, and setting the engineering development plan and roadmap for making complex technologies easy to use. 

Our company operates 24/7/365 with customers around the globe using our capabilities in mission critical operations. As a result, we respond when needed to maintain a high level of service availability, sometimes at odd hours and without notice. All members of the team are expected to participate in the on-call rotation that responds to issues/outages/anomalies so that we provide reliable performance our customers can depend on.  

About the Role 

As Senior Director of Software Engineering in the Platform Engineering team you lead our teams that build & maintain our ground systems across the globe. You will be a technology leader, people manager & technical mentor. You will lead the people that define, grow, build, test, deploy, monitor, and maintain the applications that run our constellations.  

All of our system components are python services running in AWS, with various underlying modern cloud technologies. These systems are responsible for command and telemetry handling, mission automation, system monitoring and alerting, ground station integration, satellite operator tools and interfaces, tasking & scheduling, data processing & dissemination, and common software infrastructure.  

Day-to-day responsibilities include working with internal and external stakeholders to define roadmap and set prioritization for tasks, planning team growth and help with recruiting, and providing key technical vision and expertise in the areas of software architecture and engineering. You will help set broad direction and strategy, bring in your experience to enhance & innovate, and establish best practic