Mission Planning Software Engineer

Location:Hybrid Munich

Team & Reporting line: Imaging Operations/Mission Planning Unit Reporting to the Image Operations Lead.

Our Mission

At constellr were harnessing the power of space to solve one of Earths greatest challenges: climate resilience & security in a changing world. Our thermal satellite constellation delivers the most accurate land surface temperature data on the market equipping commercial players governments defence agencies and global institutions with the thermal intelligence they need to make strategic decisions from national security and infrastructure to agriculture and climate resilience.

As a fast-scaling company with offices in Brussels Freiburg Munich Washington and Toulouse our multidisciplinary team of engineers scientists and strategists is building the future of space-based Earth observation.

Your Role:

As our Mission Planning Software Engineer you will shape the software systems that enable automated scalable mission planning for our satellite constellation. Working at the intersection of space operations and software engineering you will transform mission objectives and operational constraints into reliable planning systems that power daily satellite activity. You will collaborate across operations and product teams to define how missions are planned and executed at scale supporting the evolution from manual workflows to a unified automated platform that directly drives satellite command and imaging execution.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build core mission planning services and algorithms that power mission planning applications for a growing satellite constellation

• Shape the architecture and design of mission planning systems to ensure scalability reliability and long-term operability

• Run monitor and maintain mission planning systems in live production environments

• Define engineering standards for reliability CI/CD infrastructure-as-code observability safety and operational compliance

• Collaborate across Flight Operations Flight Dynamics Payload Satellite Operations and Product leadership to turn mission needs into technical direction and system design

• Drive adoption of CI/CD pipelines infrastructure-as-code and robust deployment practices across mission-critical systems

• Translate mission requests into executable satellite telecommands including interaction with the telecommand database

• Align mission plans with onboard scheduling and execution constraints to ensure feasible satellite operations

About you

Required:

• Bachelors or Masters degree in Aerospace Engineering Computer Science Physics or a related technical field

• 35 years of experience in software engineering space systems engineering satellite operations software or ground segment development

• Strong experience building production-grade distributed systems backend services or mission-critical software

• Experience designing or working with mission planning scheduling automation or orchestration systems in complex operational environments

• Strong software engineering skills in Python Java SQL and containerised application development.

• Proven experience developing reliable scalable software for production environments with a strong focus on correctness robustness and maintainability

• Familiarity with Linux environments and operating services in production (deployment debugging performance tuning)

• Experience with infrastructure components such as AWS CI/CD pipelines containerised deployments and service orchestration

• Ability to design and debug complex systems involving multiple services data flows and external operational dependencies

• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively with Imaging Operations Flight Operations product and engineering teams

• High level of ownership autonomy and attention to detail in mission- or safety-critical contexts

• Comfort working in a fast-paced environment where systems evolve quickly and operational reliability is essential

Nice to Have:

• Prior exposure to satellite operations environments or ground segment toolchains; particularly satellite tasking commanding and on-board schedule (plan) generation.

• Experience with real-time systems or high-reliability distributed systems.

• Experience with data systems and observability tooling (e.g. PostgreSQL time-series databases Grafana logging/monitoring stacks).

• Experience designing and consuming RESTful APIs and Django for server-side web application development.

• Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform Terramate) and automated configuration management using Ansible.

• Ability to build full-stack web applications with JavaScript HTML and CSS.

• Experience managing cloud infrastructure on AWS.

• Theoretical and applied background in AI planning and optimisation including PDDL formulation constraint satisfaction Markov decision processes and combinatorial optimisation algorithms.

• Practical experience integrating automated planning and optimisation algorithms into real-world software systems.

• Experience in event-driven software architecture design and implementation.

• Hands-on experience with container orchestration using Kubernetes.

Why join constellr

• High-Impact National Security Mission: Be part of an ambitious mission to launch the worlds first commercial thermal infrared constellation delivering sovereign-grade behavioural intelligence from space to close critical blind spots for defence intelligence and maritime surveillance agencies.

• Fast-Paced New Space Innovation: Work at the leading edge of a rapidly evolving defence sector. By leveraging modern agile New Space methodologies you will help design build and deploy dual-use thermal payloads into operational orbit at a speed and scale that traditional aerospace models simply cannot match.

• Broad Interdisciplinary Exposure: Accelerate your professional growth by collaborating daily with a diverse international cohort of astrophysicists software developers and defence-system engineers.

• Inclusive & Scientific Culture: Join a high-trust team deeply committed to diversity inclusion and scientific excellence where academic curiosity is paired with high autonomy and a flat hierarchy.

• Financial Upside & Well-being: Benefit from a Virtual Share Option Plan (VSOP) for permanent employees giving you a true stake in the companys growth alongside highly flexible hybrid working models.