Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Wanna join the adventure? Loft Orbital is revolutionizing access to space by building reliable, shareable satellites that drastically reduce the time and complexity traditionally required to get to orbit. We operate satellites, fly customer payloads, and handle entire missions from end-to-end. We’re a close-knit team of space enthusiasts, software experts, and cutting-edge technologists, all working together to make space simple for our customers. As a SeniorSite Reliability Engineer on our Cloud Infrastructure Team, you’ll play a pivotal role in maintaining and scaling our ground segment infrastructure. You’ll collaborate across development, operations, and IT to ensure the integration, delivery, and reliability of services that support our space operations on Earth and in orbit. This is an exciting opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology and help build modern automated space infrastructure. This is not your typical SRE role, we apply DevOps principles even to spacecraft control. Yes, we call it SatDevOps, and we’ll train you to operate our satellites! About the Role:

• Collaborate with developers and satellite operators to foster a strong SatDevOps culture.
• Design, implement, and maintain scalable, reliable, and secure infrastructure in a hybrid cloud environment.
• Improve our developer experience by building better tools, workflows, and environments.
• Lead efforts to automate and optimize systems, including CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure provisioning (IaC), and deployment workflows.
• Own and evolve our observability stack (metrics, tracing, logs) to improve usability and performance. Grafana-centric ecosystems are a plus.
• Implement and advocate for best practices in software reliability, fault tolerance, and performance tuning.
• Proactively identify, investigate, and resolve system reliability issues, performing root cause analyses and implementing long-term fixes.
• Partner with teams to design and operate Software Defined Network (SDN) solutions.
• Contribute to a collaborative and inclusive team culture where respectful debate and continuous learning are celebrated.

Must Haves:

• Strong experience with public cloud infrastructure, ideally GCP.
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes, architecture, deployment, ops, and resource optimization.
• Demonstrated ability to design and build scalable, highly available systems.
• Familiarity with Software Defined Networking (SDN) concepts and tools.
• Experience implementing and maintaining observability stacks (Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, etc.).
• Proficiency in at least one backend language: Go, Python, Rust, C/C++, or Java.
• Deep understanding and hands-on experience with DevOps practices: CI/CD, infrastructure as code (IaC), and automation.
• Proven track record of working in fast-paced, high-growth technical environments.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to operate independently with a proactive, results-driven mindset.
• Strong communication skills; thrives in a multicultural, cross-functional team.

Nice to Haves:

• Hands-on experience with GitOps frameworks (ArgoCD, FluxCD).
• Interest or experience in FinOps and cost-optimized architectures.
• Understanding of orchestration in resource-constrained environments, like space systems.
• Knowledge of systems engineering tools and SDLC governance.
• Familiarity with security practices, vulnerability scanning, threat detection, risk mitigation.

State law requires us to tell you the base compensation range for this role, which is $140,250- $190,000 per year. This is determined by your education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities.  The salary range for this role is intentionally wide as we evaluate individuals based on their unique experience and abilities to fit our needs. Most importantly, we are excited to meet you, and see if you are a great fit for our team. What we can’t quantify for you are the exciting challenges, supportive team, and amazing culture we enjoy.

 *Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other marginalized 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 Orbital builds “shareable” satellites, providing a fast & simple path to orbit for organizations that require access to space. Powered by our hardware & software products, we operate satellites, fly customer payloads onboard, and handle entire missions from end to end - significantly reducing the lead-time and risk of a traditional space mission. Our standard interface enables us to fly multiple customer payloads on the same satellite, with capabilities such as earth imagery, weather & climate /science data collection, IoT connectivity, in-orbit demonstrations, and national security missions. Our customers trust us to manage their space infrastructure, so they can focus on what matters most to them: operating their mission and collecting their data. At Loft, you’ll be given the autonomy and ownership to solve significant challenges, but with a close-knit and supportive team at your back. We believe that diversity and community are the foundation of an open culture. We are committed to hiring the best people regardless of background and make their time at Loft the most fulfilling period of their career. We value kind, supportive and team-oriented collaborators. It is also crucial for us that you are a problem solver and a great communicator. As our team is international, you will need strong English skills to better collaborate, easily communicate complex ideas and convey important messages. With 4 satellites on-orbit and a wave of exciting missions launching soon, we are scaling up quickly across our offices in San Francisco, CA | Golden, CO | and Toulouse, France. As an international company your resume will be reviewed by people across our offices so please attach a copy in English.