Spacecraft Engineering Internship (Site Reliability/ IT) - Fall 2025

About Varda

Low Earth orbit is open for business. Varda is accelerating the development of commercial space infrastructure, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules. 

From life-saving pharmaceuticals to more powerful fiber optics, there is a world of products used on Earth today that can only be manufactured in space. Varda is accelerating innovation in the orbital economy by creating both the products and infrastructure needed so space can directly benefit life on Earth. Our mission is to expand the economic bounds of humankind. 

Our team is uniquely suited to accomplishing this goal, with leadership and staff comprised of veterans from SpaceX, Blue Origin, major pharmaceutical companies and Silicon Valley. Varda was founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov with significant backing from world class investors including Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, and Also Capital. 

Varda is headquartered in El Segundo, California, where we have offices and a production facility where our vehicles, equipment, and materials are built, integrated, and tested. Varda also has offices in Washington, DC and Huntsville, AL (coming soon).

Join Varda, and work to create a bustling in-space ecosystem.

 

About This Role 

Fall internships will range between the months of September and December. All dates dependent upon the university schedule of the selected students. Internships are full-time and on-site in Los Angeles, CA.

Site Reliability supports the infrastructure, hardware, software and services throughout all departments at Varda. We are responsible for ensuring services are running reliability and implementing new tools at scale. Day-to-day includes supporting team member onboarding, building out new engineering areas, troubleshooting difficult system administration challenges and implementing automation to scale our systems and services to support Varda's mission.

Internships at Varda are optimal for students looking to grow technically and professionally while working on impactful projects critical to the company’s success. You will be working on a collaborative team in a startup environment while being able to learn from some of most accomplished and experienced aerospace professionals in the world. We’re dedicated to providing an experience that will let your decisions and contributions help drive Varda’s success. 

Responsibilities

• Work with performance data to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
• Assist in tuning systems and applications to enhance performance and reduce latency.
• Develop and update documentation for systems, processes, and incident reports.
• Help create reports on system performance, incidents, and other metrics to inform team decisions.
• Collaborate with other engineering teams, such as development, operations, and QA, to address issues and improve systems.

Basic Qualifications

• Some experience with networking, computer hardware, computer software, scripting, programming, or database systems.
• Knowledge of python, powershell, c++, or ansible, terraform, saltstack or any scripting/automation tools.

Preferred Skills And Experience 

• Previous internship or co-op experience 
• Previous experience on technical project teams (i.e. Rocket club, formula SAE, etc.) 
• Software Engineer: Familiarity with Microprocessors and/or FPGAs, C/C++, Python scripting experience, experience setting up CI pipelines and unit tests 

ITAR Requirements

• Varda, like all employers, must ensure that its employees working in the United States are lawfully authorized to work in the U.S.  Additionally, our employees are exposed to and have access to certain export-controlled items. At present, some of our technology to which employees have access requires a license to be exported to individuals other than “U.S. Persons” as defined in U.S. export regulations. Because our employees are provided access to export-controlled items, our current policy is to only hire “U.S. persons” who are permitted to have access to our technology without an export license. 

  “US person” means: U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3) (i.e., individual admitted t