Senior Staff Software Engineer

### Who you are
- B.S. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant time building cloud-based systems at scale
- Demonstrated expertise designing, building, deploying, and operating distributed backend services
- Deep proficiency in Python (required) with production experience in at least one additional language (Go, C++, or similar)
- Strong understanding of architecture patterns, service boundaries, message-driven workflows, and API design
- Experience with cloud environments (AWS/GCP/Azure) and containerized deployments
- Expertise with relational databases (Postgres/MySQL) and message brokers (Kafka, SQS, or similar)
- Strong grasp of testing strategies, observability, CI/CD practices, and reliability engineering
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions across teams
- Comfortable participating in and guiding on-call rotations for critical systems
- Eligibility for US security clearance
- Deep experience with Kubernetes including container orchestration, scaling, operational best practices, and monitoring in cloud environments
- Demonstrated full-stack capability with TypeScript/JavaScript and modern UI frameworks
- Background in Math/Physics, AI/ML, or Orbital Mechanics
- Experience operating in a high-availability or mission-critical environment
- Active US security clearance

### What the job involves
- LeoLabs is seeking a highly experienced and technically driven Senior Staff Software Engineer to join our cross-functional Architecture team
- In this senior role, you will contribute to a collaborative, high-impact group of engineers building the software that powers real-time decisions for protecting and managing satellites and other objects in low-earth orbit
- As a Senior Staff Engineer on the Architecture team, you will set architectural direction for our software systems, design and deliver mission-critical software, and be a leader in ensuring that our system meets our customers’ needs
- You will lead architecture across multiple systems, elevate engineering standards, and guide the team in delivering reliable, secure, and high-performance solutions
- The Architecture team is a key part of our broader software engineering organization, providing leadership on:
- Agile practices to meet rapidly changing market requirements
- Scalable and secure software development
- Best practices to ensure high quality and reliability
- Supporting our other software teams in web-based UI, backend services, integrations between systems and APIs, and interfaces with LeoLabs’ data lake
- Prioritizing developer experience to maximize team productivity
- We partner closely with radar operations, catalog maintenance, infrastructure and product teams to build cohesive, powerful platform capabilities
- Lead architecture decisions for major components and cross-team integrations
- Mentor, guide, and support other engineers through design reviews, pairing, and informal coaching
- Collaborate with Insights, Catalog, and Platform teams to define end-to-end solutions
- Ensure reliability, observability, security, and performance across production systems
- Define and improve engineering practices, architecture patterns, CI/CD pipelines, and tooling
- Own critical services through the full development lifecycle—including operation, monitoring, and on-call support
- Evaluate and integrate new technologies and approaches to improve robustness and developer experience
- Work directly with product and cross-functional partners to influence technical direction and roadmap planning
- Within 1 month, you’ll:
- Complete onboarding and gain deep context on LeoLabs’ mission and architecture
- Review key Insights systems and operational practices
- Contribute initial improvements or fixes that demonstrate your technical approach and engineering standards
- Within 3 months, you’ll:
- Own medium-sized backend features end-to-end with minimal guidance
- Lead constructive design reviews and actively support teammates
- Identify architectural or operational pain points and propose solutions
- Within 6 months, you’ll:
- Take ownership of major services or system components
- Lead implementation of complex features requiring architectural decisions
- Improve engineering processes, tooling, or reliability practices across the team
- Serve as a go-to technical resource for cross-functional partners
- Within 12 months, you’ll:
- Influence strategic technical direction for the Insights team and adjacent systems
- Drive major multi-team initiatives, integrations, or architectural evolutions
- Mentor engineers across the organization and elevate overall engineering quality
- Proactively identify systemic opportunities for scale, resilience, and performance improvements

### Benefits
- Medical insurance
- Vision insurance
- Dental insurance
- 401(k)