Software engineer - Product industrialisation & deployment (Hiring Immediately)

About Verraspace

As the need for in-orbit operations grows, driven by defence requirements and the rapid increase in orbital traffic, understanding what an object is doing and predicting what it will do next sits behind most operational decisions in space. And we're doing just that.

Verraspace is a Physics AI company. We build on advanced physical models developed by our founders during their PhDs, providing a better understanding of how photons interact with their environment. The same physics that lets us read an observation more faithfully, through better image processing and object characterisation, also lets us predict orbits and trajectories more accurately. We have demonstrated both.

Physics AI is how we get from here to space world models. Physics gives structure, and holds where data is scarce; learning gives reach, and captures what the equations leave out. Combined, they become a consistent set of models, broad enough to support design-space exploration for spacecraft, payloads, and mission optimisation end to end. We intend to reach designs and mission profiles that current tools cannot, with better system performance, better mission economics, and richer, more actionable data.

The role

You will turn our models and prototypes into products customers can depend on, and build the software foundations the company will grow on. You will work directly with the physicists and ML engineers who write the models.

Where we are. Our models exist as research code and prototypes: mostly Python/JAX, developed and run on AWS (EC2). They work. They are not yet products a customer can depend on, but we have laid out an initial architecture, infrastructure and practices to support the range of applications we are about to build.

Where we are going, over the next 12 to 18 months:

• A coherent codebase, with components shared across applications and clear boundaries between models, product logic and infrastructure, without accumulating complexity we do not need.
• First production deployments with customers, including government and defence customers who run software on their own infrastructure, sometimes isolated from the internet. We need to design for those constraints from the start.
• Development infrastructure that lets a team of 15 to 20 ship quickly without breaking the models: CI/CD, reproducible environments, testing of numerical code, GPU resources for development and training.
• Performance work on the models themselves, alongside the people who write them: finding bottlenecks, optimising, and contributing features.
• Further out: running parts of our software on board satellites and maintaining it through their mission lifetime. This is not a near-term objective, but if it interests you, it is on the horizon.

What you would own. Depending on your expertise and interests, one or more of: software architecture and reusability; performance and quality of the codebase; development and deployment infrastructure. You will set the coding and architectural practices, make the technology choices and define the roadmap for your scope, with the team and on the basis of facts.

This is a foundational role, and a hands-on one. You will decide how we build software, and you will build it. The balance between architecture, infrastructure and implementation will follow the needs of the team and your strengths. As the team grows, leading the software effort is open to you if you want it; it is not a condition of the role.

How we work

We are building a company where strong engineers and scientists can do their best work. We focus on the people around you and how decisions get made.

• The mission comes first. Everyone here works on the same problem. We judge decisions on facts and on whether they make the whole system better, not on who made them.
• High expectations, in both directions. You can expect a lot from your colleagues, and they will expect a lot from you. When something does not work, whether a design, a process or a behaviour, we say so early and directly, and we fix it. We do not let problems with people linger: it is unfair to everyone else.
• Freedom with accountability. You own your scope, set the objectives you commit to, and are trusted to deliver them. Autonomy grows with the responsibility you take on.
• Trusted for judgement, challenged on substance. In your area, your call carries weight. Outside it, you learn from people whose call does.
• We solve problems, we do not create them. When something breaks, we look for the cause and the fix, not for someone to blame.
• No decoration. We do not try to make the job attractive with things th]]>