Albedo

Full-stack VLEO satellite missions

Director of Software

$200K - $219K3Broomfield, CO Job type Full-time Role Engineering, Embedded systems Experience 11+ years Visa US citizen/visa only Apply to Albedo and hundreds of other fast-growing YC startups with a singleprofile. Apply to role 7

About the role

Be one of the Bedo 100

Albedo is making Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) mainstream, building the infrastructure to usher every satellite mission set into this new orbital domain. We build buses, integrated satellites, and turnkey missions for customers to thrive in VLEO, between 250 km - 400 km, where proximity compounds performance and drag self-cleans debris. Aspart of the first 100 employees at Albedo, you will have a big impact on Albedo27s trajectory to proliferating VLEO 1hether you27re advancing hardware to increase satellite longevity, scaling production for large constellations, building next-gen flight and ground software to push performance, or enabling missions that matter for national security and our day-to-day life here on earth. How We Operate: Albedo takes a first-principles approach 1n space and in business. We move with speed, take calculated risks, and learn quickly. We use AI regularly to create leverage in every discipline across the company. We work in-person at our Broomfield CO HQ to maximize team and company productivity. We work hard and with urgency to compound our first-mover advantage. Who We're Looking For: Builders who want to own outcomes, not tasks. Systems thinkers who balance precision with iteration while thinking about the big picture. Individuals who are energized by creating a category rather than competing in an existing one. You27ll join a team that has already proven what others said wasn27t feasible and is now scaling and upgrading our VLEO buses & payloads to serve mission sets across sensing, communications, and responsive operations. If you can feel the excitement running through your veins, apply to be one of the Bedo 100.

What You27ll Do:

• Lead the software engineering organization 1 FSW, GNC, applied AI, ground 1 across approximately three to four teams of managers and ICs
• Own the integrated software performance of the satellite: deterministic flight software, control law implementation and verification, on-orbit and on-ground AI, and the command-and-control path
• Manage the simulation and HIL infrastructure that scales across the program and stays honestly flight-like
• Lead the closure of the GNC analytical-to-flight loop so that anomalies trace cleanly to model gaps or implementation bugs without ambiguity
• Develop technical leaders in each software domain (including domains outside your strongest) and resist the gravity to over-invest in your home discipline
• Defend the boundary between flight software and ground tooling, and the boundary between software and hardware, against drift
• Partner with the Director of Hardware, Systems Engineering, and Program Management to make software a peer of hardware in the system

Your Ideal Skills and Experience:

• Twelve-plus years in real-time embedded, GNC, or flight software, with at least four leading software engineering managers
• Deep fluency in deterministic flight or flight-like software: timing, scheduling, fault containment, C++ on RTOS
• GNC literacy at the leadership level - you cannot derive every Kalman variant from scratch, but you can engage substantively with control law structure, estimator behavior, actuator interaction, and their failure modes ,and you have done so in your own career
• Track record of building simulation and HIL infrastructure that caught real bugs before flight ,and post-mortem discipline that changed the pipeline when bugs survived
• Experience leading heterogeneous software teams across domains you did not personally come up through
• Real opinions on the HW/SW boundary ,on-orbit vs ground compute split ,and where abstractions earn their keep

Salary Range:

• $200 ,000 - $218 ,830 per year

Compensation and Benefits for Full-Time Roles:

• Employee friendly equity compensation
• 4% direct matching 401k
• Health Insurance: 100% employee coverage & 75% dependent coverage
• Parental leave and childcare coverage
• Flexible vacation and sick time from day one
• 12 company holidays
• $100 monthly wellness benefit
• Relocation package if not based in Denver

The final compensation package is subject to change if the candidate's experience and company need drive a different job level than originally slated for the position. Albedo does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to Albedo employees. Albedo is not responsible for any fees or overhead related to unsolicited resumes. Additional Requirements: In compliance with federal law ,all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States ,and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire .All persons hired will be required to be a U.S .citizen ,a lawful permanent resident of the U.S .,or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C .1324b(a)(3) ,or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S .Department of State. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled: Albedo is an equal opportunity employer ,and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race ,color ,religion ,sex ,sexual orientation ,gender identity ,national origin ,disability status ,protected veteran status ,or any other characteristic protected by law. Relocation: Relocation support for this position is available US CITIZENSHIP IS REQUIRED

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About Albedo

Satellite imagery is a historically-scarce resource ,whose adoption has been slowed by an unbalanced relationship between price and resolution .In theory ,frequent ultra high-resolution imagery of Earth has near infinite applications ;in reality only a sliver of that potential has been realized. Albedo aims to be the catalyst in unlocking satellite imagery’s latent potential hoping to expand current applications and propel discovery of new use cases .Whether our imagery is being used to reduce wildfire risk assess environmental impact of global forestry contribute timely 3D reconstructions of urban areas or monitor carbon emissions from industrial power plants our mission is get better data into hands decision makers fast .We’re modernizing how satellite imagery is used by providing near real-time access to our ultra-high resolution data.