Director of Software Engineering

Salary: £76,000 - 76,000 per year

Requirements:

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 3 years in a technical leadership or staff-level individual contributor role
• Proven track record of building and shipping reliable production systems at scale
• Strong technical credibility and the ability to earn engineers respect through judgment and craft
• Experience with SRE principles, reliability engineering, or large-scale automation
• Strong foundation in Python, distributed systems, data platforms, and cloud infrastructure
• Experience hiring and developing engineers
• Strong communication and influence skills to drive technical decisions across teams not directly controlled by us
• Preferred: experience applying AI/ML or advanced analytics to operational or monitoring problems
• Preferred: experience writing performance software in Rust
• Preferred: background in space systems, aerospace, or highly constrained real-time environments
• Preferred: experience building data lakes, telemetry platforms, or observability infrastructure at scale
• Preferred: history of leading teams through technical transformations

Responsibilities:

• Define and own the technical roadmap for autonomous constellation operations
• Set the architectural direction for our data platform, reliability systems, and automation infrastructure
• Stay hands-on by reviewing code, prototyping solutions, and working through technical details when needed
• Establish engineering standards across code quality, system design, testing, and observability, and hold the team to them
• Recruit, develop, and retain a team of 6 to 10 reliability and platform engineers
• Set the pace, tone, and ambition for the team and create an environment where engineers grow, own their work, and ship with pride
• Identify capability gaps and level up engineers through mentorship
• Lead the shift from manual, operator-driven processes to fully automated and self-healing operations
• Define and drive SLOs, error budgets, and reliability targets for the constellation
• Partner with satellite operations and mission teams to translate operational pain points into software solutions
• Represent the team in company-wide discussions about architecture, infrastructure, and platform strategy
• Influence how we think about automation, data, and AI/ML across the broader engineering organization

Technologies:

• AI
• Cloud
• Network
• Python
• Rust

More:

We are Spire Global, a space-to-cloud analytics company that owns and operates the largest multi-purpose constellation of satellites. We improve life on Earth with data from space, delivering advanced maritime, aviation, and weather tracking through our proprietary data, algorithms, global ground station network, and 24/7 operations that provide real-time global coverage. We operate a hybrid work model, and this role requires a minimum of three days per week in the office. We offer global perks including our Name Your Satellite Program, launch attendance, generous time off, education assistance, an employee assistance program, employee stock purchase program, family leave, fitness reimbursement, employee referral program, and healthy snacks and beverages in every office. We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to inclusion across all backgrounds and identities. A background check may be required for conditional offers, and access to US export-controlled software or technology may be needed for this role.

last updated 34 week of 2026