Staff Software Engineer, Ground & Control Services

BlackSky

Staff Software Engineer developing software for autonomous satellite operations at BlackSky. Collaborating on high-speed tasking and monitoring for satellite constellation performance.

Posted 4/30/2026full-timeSeattle • Virginia, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $155,000 - $180,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSAzureCloudGoKubernetesMicroservicesPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design, implement, and maintain software that enables autonomous satellite operations and real-time tasking.
Develop and integrate services that interface with ground station infrastructure and satellite communication protocols.
Build software solutions to support satellite tasking and monitoring.
Collaborate with operations, communication engineers, flight software engineers, mission planning engineers, and other software teams to understand and refine technical requirements.
Write clean, maintainable code with strong emphasis on safety, test coverage, and reliability.
Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and team planning discussions.
Support on-call rotations and troubleshooting of live system operations as needed.
Anticipated 10-15% travel required to customer site.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
A minimum of ten (10) years of professional software development experience.
Proficiency in one or more programming languages (e.g. Go, Python, C++).
Experience developing and deploying microservices in both cloud environments (e.g. AWS, GCS, Azure) and on-premise Kubernetes-based environments.
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and modern version control systems (e.g. Git).
Strong problem-solving skills and an ability to understand complex systems end to end.
Excellent communication and collaboration skills in a cross-functional team environment.
Prior experience with satellite operations, ground stations, or others aerospace-related domains (e.g. X-Band, UHF, or telemetry).
The program this role supports requires being a US-citizen.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Medical, dental, vision, disability, group term life and AD&D, voluntary life and AD&D insurance
15 days of PTO, 11 Company holidays, four Floating Holidays, one day of paid volunteerism leave per year, parental leave and more
401(k) pre-tax and Roth deferral options with employer match
Flexible Spending Accounts
Employee Stock Purchase Program
Employee Assistance and Travel Assistance Programs
Employer matching donations
Professional development
Mac or PC? Your choice!
Awesome swag

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

software developmentprogramming languagesGoPythonC++microservicescloud environmentsKubernetesCI/CD pipelinesautomated testing

Soft Skills

problem-solvingcommunicationcollaborationteamworktechnical requirements understandingcode review participationdesign review participationtroubleshootingplanning discussionssafety emphasis