Senior Software Engineer - Tasking and Planning

Job description

ROLE HIGHLIGHTS: • Senior Software Engineer - Tasking and Planning • Location: Valencia, Spain • Department: Ground Segment • Reports to: Engineering Manager • Employment type: Permanent • Workplace model: Hybrid (3 days per week in office) • Employment is subject to applicable security screening (incl. SUPO, where required) WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS: As Senior Software Engineer on the Acquisition Planning team, you will build the software systems that enable ICEYE and its customers to task satellites, plan data acquisitions, and turn orbital mechanics into operational intelligence capability. From pass prediction and coverage computation engines to event-driven backend services and the engineering interfaces that let users visualise and de-conflict collection plans, you will own the stack end-to-end — working directly alongside engineers and product managers with deep operational backgrounds to understand what users need and ship software that delivers it. This is an early-stage, high-autonomy role where you will help define the architecture and direction of a platform that sits at the intersection of software engineering, applied mathematics, and real-world intelligence operations. WHO WE ARE ICEYE delivers space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to governments and allied nations. This includes sovereign and turnkey ISR missions leveraging ICEYE’s world-leading synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite technology, as well as access to data from the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation. These capabilities enable partners to detect and respond to critical changes anywhere on Earth with unprecedented speed and accuracy, day or night and in any weather, supported by ultra high-resolution imagery and high-frequency revisits. As a trusted partner for defense, intelligence, security, and maritime domain awareness, ICEYE’s near real-time data creates a tactical advantage for mission-critical operations. Designed for dual use, the platform also serves civil protection and commercial users for natural-catastrophe intelligence, insurance, maritime monitoring including oil-spill detection, and finance, contributing to global security and community resilience. ICEYE is headquartered in Finland and operates globally across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. We have more than 900 employees, united by a shared vision: improving life on Earth by becoming the global source of truth in Earth Observation. YOUR DAY-TO-DAY RESPONSIBILITIES - Tasking and Planning Engines. Orbit propagation, pass prediction, acquisition geometry, sensor configuration parameters, and coverage footprint computation. Applied science mathematics turned into operational capability via Software. - Platform Services. Backend services handling task management. Event-driven workers performing opportunity calculation and synchronising state asynchronously via NATS JetStream. PostgreSQL for persistence. Responsiveness and resilience at the service of the mission. - Engineering Interfaces. Robust and evolvable APIs and UIs that enable engineers to visualise passes, compare collection plans, plan tasks, and self-service their access to space. - Whatever the future brings. Multi-sensor coordination, processing pipeline integration, new collection strategies, and capabilities that will emerge from close collaboration with users. You will help define the direction, not just execute it. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR Must haves: - Strong software engineering fundamentals. You design decoupled, maintainable, resilient, performant systems. You can reason about concurrency and how transactions work. You know about CAP and regularly make deliberate trade-offs between Consistency and Availability. You understand the difference between “At most once”, “At least once” and how to design systems around those guarantees. - Fluency with AI-assisted engineering. You treat AI as a standard part of your toolkit, not a novelty or a threat. You use it across the whole of your work (design exploration, code, tests, documentation, debugging, reviewing unfamiliar codebases) and you have a feel for where it accelerates you and where it quietly costs you time. Crucially, you stay accountable for the output: you know how to prompt and scope a task well, how to verify what comes back, and how to keep the guarantees that production demands. You are curious about improving the way you and your team work with these tools, and you help others get better at it. - Production experience. You have designed, built, and operated services in production: REST APIs, relational databases, and asynchronous workers. You know how to make your systems observable and resilient. You understand what production demands beyond making things work locally. - Fast learner in technical domains. This role involves orbital mechanics, RF physics, and geospatial data. You don’t need to come in knowing these — but you do need to be the kind of engineer who can pick up a new domain quickly, ask sharp questions, and start contributing before you’ve mastered every detail. - Ability to work from ambiguity. You can take a loosely defined operational need (e.g. “we need users to de-conflict between competing collection plans”) and turn it into concrete engineering work. You ask the right questions, make well-reasoned decisions, and adjust when new information arrives. - Effective communication across domains. You will work alongside people who think in many different ways and work in different contexts. You can listen carefully, ask precise questions, and articulate technical tradeoffs in terms that everybody can understand, and adjust to your audience accordingly. Nice to haves: - Event-driven architecture. Experience with NATS, Kafka, SQS, or similar. Understanding of at-least-once delivery, idempotency, and the practical tradeoffs of asynchronous service communication. - Modern frontend engineering. Production experience with Next.js, React, and TypeScript, particularly for data-intensive or real-time visualisation applications. Experience with CesiumJS or deck.gl http://deck.gl is a strong plus. - Proficiency with AI development tools. You actively use AI assistants (Cursor, Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) in your daily engineering work. Not tentatively, but as a primary tool for writing, reviewing, and iterating on code. You understand their strengths and limitations, and you use them to move faster without sacrificing quality. - Orbital mechanics background. Experience with TLEs, SGP4 propagation, pass prediction, incidence and squint geometry, and access window computation. Familiarity with tools like Skyfield, GMAT, or STK. This is valuable but learnable on the job. - Geospatial engineering. GeoJSON, CZML, WGS84, map projections, coverage polygons, and ground footprints. Experience building systems that process and render geospatial data. - Space, defence, or intelligence sector experience. You have worked in an environment where users depend on the software you build, where the physics constrains what is possible, and where the quality of your work has direct operational consequences. You understand what a tasking workflow looks like from a user perspective. APPLICATION PROCESS • TA Partner Screen Call • Hiring Manager Interview • Technical Interview • Values & Fit Interview • SVP of Engineering Interview WORKING AT ICEYE At ICEYE, you’ll join a diverse and highly engaged team united by the ambition to make the impossible possible. As a global scale-up, we combine speed and ambition with the opportunity to take real ownership from day one. Your growth, wellbeing, and success are a priority, with continuous professional development, training opportunities, and a culture where collaboration is how we win. HOW WE WORK (OUR VALUES) Make the impossible possible: We set ambitious goals and stay calm under pressure. We bring grit, optimism, and ownership when things get hard, and we keep moving until we find a way. • Be curious: Go deep, ask questions, listen carefully, and think critically. Understand the why behind decisions. • See the big picture: Stay close to what’s happening across the company so you can make better decisions. Consider how your work affects others. • Drive effective teamwork: Create psychological safety, invite different perspectives, and build inclusive teams. There are no bad questions. • Act as one team: We win together. We match tasks to the right owner and stay agile as priorities shift. • Have fun: What we do matters and it should be enjoyable. Celebrate progress, take pride in results, and share the wins. BENEFITS Our benefits are designed to support your health and wellbeing, at work and beyond. We keep improving them based on employee feedback, and offerings vary by location. Talent Acquisition will confirm what applies for this role and location during the process. OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION We want ICEYE to be a place where people can be themselves and do great work. Different backgrounds and perspectives make us stronger, which is why we work to create an environment where people feel included, respected, and able to speak up. Whatever your background, we want you to bring your authentic self to the table. We’re committed to fair, inclusive hiring and equal opportunity. Everyone is welcome to apply. If you need any adjustments or support during the recruitment process, tell us and we will do our best to help. Apply now to start your ICEYE journey and help us continue to make the impossible possible together. Read more about ICEYE and working with us at iceye.com http://iceye.com.