Onboard Software Engineer - Peripheral Services

Wanna join the adventure? Loft's AI for Space group is building the stack that runs real machine learning in orbit; turning raw sensor data into decisions on the satellite itself, so insight reaches the customer in minutes instead of hours. The AI Engineering team is where models meet the spacecraft. We own the full path from a partner's trained model to something that actually runs — fast — on flight hardware: compiling ONNX models into optimized engines for each accelerator, the Space Inference Engine and its execution providers, the SDK that packages models for flight, and the perf tooling that proves a model fits its power, thermal, and latency budget before it ever leaves the ground. As we open the platform to a growing roster of defense and Earth-observation partners, the team's scope and the range of silicon we target are expanding fast.

As our ML Runtime Engineer, you'll own model compilation and the performance tooling behind it. We're looking for someone scrappy — the kind of engineer who takes an unfamiliar model and an unforgiving power budget, digs into the graph, and gets it running on real hardware without waiting for the path to be handed to them. You'll move between model compilation, runtime internals, quantization, and hardware-in-the-loop CI, sometimes in the same afternoon.

Design, implement, and refine software with a high degree of ownership, driving impactful features from concept through delivery while ensuring robustness and reliability. Review code, provide clear feedback, and enforce adherence to established development processes, style guides, and design standards to maintain consistency and quality across the codebase. Design and implement unit and integration tests for both self-authored and peer-authored code. Utilize version control systems to create feature branches, push code, and merge approved code into production branches. Contribute to the onboard software architecture through design proposals and collaborative review Participate in the review and enhancement of software development processes and design standards. Coordinate with downstream teams on the distribution and adoption of the latest releases. In addition to responsibilities within onboard software, you’ll have the opportunity to directly be involved in operating our on-orbit fleet of satellites.

3+ years' software engineering experience, using programming languages including C/C++ (C++11 or newer) and Python. Proficiency with Git and collaborative development workflows Experience with continuous integration tools (GitLab-CI, Jenkins, or similar). Knowledge of build systems (e.g., Make, CMake). Understanding of distributed architecture. Familiarity with networking protocols (e.g., UDP , TCP, IP) and POSIX standards. Experience in developing multi-threaded applications. Previous team leader or manager role

Familiarity with additional programming languages, such as Go or Rust. Experience with embedded Linux operation, including Yocto, device trees, systemd, and Linux on ARM platforms. Proficiency with unit test frameworks (e.g., pytest, Googletest, Unity) Experience with middleware framework (gRPC, ZMQ / NATS , etc.) Experience with containerization technologies (Docker, K3S , systemd-nspawn) Experience with space systems and concepts

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

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