Software Engineer, Satellite Operations

Summary

At Apple, we strive every single day to craft products that enrich people’s lives. Our successes are the result of skilled domain experts working in an environment which encourages creativity, collaboration, and re-thinking of old problems in new ways!

As a member of the Satellite Connectivity Group, you will work on the satellite network that enables connectivity to iPhone and Watch Ultra when off the grid without cellular or Wi-Fi coverage. Every day, Apple customers use Emergency SOS, Roadside assistance, and Messages via satellite to stay connected when they have no other means to communicate.

You will have the unique and rewarding opportunity to shape this and other critical services, to the benefit and safety of millions of Apple device users.

The Satellite Connectivity Group is hiring a software engineer to build automation and runtime infrastructure behind our communication satellite network. Our premise is that a satellite network should be run the way modern software services are run — through code, APIs, and instrumentation rather than manual console work. You will sit on the seam between the satellite network, the cloud services that connect to it, and our operations partners that control it.

You will partner with hardware, cloud, and operations teams on root-cause investigations. You will carry the pager for the systems you build. The software you write will be foundational for a connectivity service for millions of users worldwide.

About the role

You will join the team responsible for developing, deploying, and keeping connectivity services healthy end-to-end. On a given week you might trace a telemetry discrepancy from a cloud service through the ground system, script a new network test case, extend the continuous delivery (CD) pipeline that ships system health tooling, and write the procedure that lets the on-call engineer resolve the same issue next time without paging you.

We expect the person in this seat to automate their own job continuously - to replace manual steps with tested code, and to leave behind procedures precise enough that someone else can execute correctly.

You will work from design documents and interface control documents (ICDs), and you will be expected to reason through large, unfamiliar codebases on your own.

Responsibilities

• Architect and develop mission automation software alongside our operations partners that enables lights-out operation of a satellite constellation
• Be part of a 24/7 on-call rotation for those services; lead anomaly response and drive post-incident review
• Author clear operational procedures for the mission that will be used by an operations team, interacting daily with the systems you build
• Reason across large codebases, tracing behavior end to end to implement new features and root-cause issues
• Work from design documents and ICDs to define and validate operations automation
• Own continuous integration (CI) and CD pipelines for mission automation software services

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or Aerospace Engineering
• 5+ years of software engineering experience, including production Python
• Experience with developing automation of (preferred) satellite constellations or fleets of autonomous vehicles/drones
• Ability to independently navigate and reason about large, unfamiliar code repositories spanning both embedded and cloud-based software
• Hands-on fluency with Linux and Mac OS, cloud service APIs, modern command-line usage and HTTP tooling
• Experience working with CI and production CD pipelines for a software service
• Experience using design documents and ICDs as foundations for an operational service

Export Compliance Requirement

This position requires access to U.S. export-controlled technology and technical data regulated under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Applicants must be eligible to access this export-controlled information.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating a satellite constellation in production, serving real users
• Embedded software development, and hands-on work with hardware in a lab environment
• Working knowledge of RF and DSP concepts, sufficient to reason about satellite system behavior
• Small, fast-moving space programs where operations engineers write and own the software they operate
• Experience leading, or serving as a core member of, a 24/7 operations team
• Building an SOP or runbook framework from scratch, not just executing an existing one
• Experience leveraging AI tools to quickly reason about and prototype new systems