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Loft Orbital

Ground Software Engineer - Core

Loft Orbital is hiring a Ground Software Engineer - Core in Toulouse, France. Level rates it ; you can apply on Loft Orbital.

Level's read on this job

  • Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this software engineer role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
  • The posting mentions Python, Django and GraphQL among its tools and skills.
  • Level classes it as a mid-level role.
  • Loft Orbital has 71 other open roles on Level.
  • Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

Software Engineer building core ground platform infrastructure, workflow automation, and leading the creation of AI tooling for spacecraft operations.

pythondjangographqlkubernetesterraformprometheusotel

Wanna join the adventure?

Loft Orbital is looking for a Software Engineer to join our Core team within Ground Platform. The team develops the core capabilities that support Loft's ground platform, improve development workflows, and ensure platform reliability. You'll help build shared services and tools that benefit software teams across Loft.

You'll work on backend services, workflow automation, AI tooling, and platform infrastructure, with a focus on observability and reliability. You'll also have the opportunity to take part in spacecraft operations through SatDevOps rotations, helping investigate anomalies and supporting real-time incident response when needed.

If you're excited about improving how software is developed across Loft, contributing to key technical decisions, and building more reliable platform systems, we'd love to hear from you.

About this role:

    • Evaluate and implement new technologies and software patterns that propagate to the entire Loft's software stack
    • Lead the creation and evolution of Loft's AI tooling for development, review, and spacecraft anomaly investigation
    • Develop central ground platform functionalities such as workflow automation, microservice inter-communication, and metrics
    • Take responsibility for the reliability and performance of Loft's ground platform infrastructure, including message queues, CI/CD, and observability
    • Have the opportunity to take part in spacecraft operations through SatDevOps rotations, occasionally helping investigate anomalies and supporting real‑time incident response when needed
    • Collaborate with software engineers and satellite operators from all over the company to support and foster consistent, maintainable, and performant software solutions

Must Haves:

    • Solid backend software development experience
    • Hands-on knowledge of deployment and Infrastructure as Code
    • Ability to define and maintain CI/CD pipelines
    • Experience working with Kubernetes

Nice to Haves:

    • Python development, particularly with Django
    • Knowledge of GraphQL and Graphene
    • Experience with message queues and streaming technologies (NATS)
    • Knowledge of DevOps and observability tools (Helm, Terraform, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Loki, etc)
    • Familiarity with AI tooling
    • Frontend development with Vue and Web Components

Some of Our Awesome Benefits:

  • Equity, we want you to have an active role in our success
  • Up to 35 days of Paid Time Off (vacations & RTT ) and flexible working hours, we want you to be at your best
  • Health and life insurance, we care about your health
  • Lunch Vouchers, because let’s be honest, we love food! (we even have a slack channel about it #loft-gourmand)
  • Cross-office travel opportunities between San Francisco, Colorado, and Toulouse to learn from our differences
  • Company and team off-sites and many other events to work & celebrate together
  • Relocation assistance to Toulouse when applicable
 *Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented people tend to only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Loft, we value respectful debate and people who aren’t afraid to challenge assumptions.  We strongly encourage you to apply, even if you don’t check all the boxes.
Who We Are
Loft: Space Made Simple. 
Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable, and simple way to deploy missions in orbit.
We integrate, launch, and operate spacecraft, offering end-to-end missions as a service across Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on-orbit AI, national security missions, and more. Leveraging our existing space infrastructure and an extensive inventory of satellite buses, Loft is reducing years-long integration and launch timelines to months. With more than 30 missions flown, Loft’s flight heritage and proven technologies enable customers to focus on their mission objectives.
With a growing fleet on track to reach 30 satellites by 2027, we are scaling up quickly across our offices in San Francisco, CA | Golden, CO | and Toulouse, France to meet accelerating demand for space infrastructure.
As an international company your resume will be reviewed by people across our offices so please attach a copy in English.

How we rate this

Ground Software Engineer - Core at Loft Orbital rates 65 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

PythonDjangoGraphQLKubernetesTerraformPrometheusOtel

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Pay

Typical software engineer job
$167k

This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical software engineer figure when pay comes up. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. What's a project where you used Python hands-on?
  2. Walk me through how you've used Django in your day-to-day work.
  3. What are the limits of GraphQL that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
  4. What's a project where you used Kubernetes hands-on?
  5. Walk me through how you've used Terraform in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: Python, Django, GraphQL, Kubernetes, and Terraform. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
  • Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
  • Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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