A London-based space scale-up building complete satellite communications networks that governments and operators can own and run themselves. You’ll set the software direction for the ground network that ties those satellites together, working alongside telecoms specialists and a growing engineering team.

The company’s mission

Making secure, independently owned satellite connectivity affordable for nations and operators.

Role Overview

A senior, hands-on role owning the software architecture for the ground segment, from edge nodes handling radio and packet processing through to the cloud platforms that orchestrate and operate the network. You’ll design the frameworks, write code where it matters, lead design reviews and work directly with customers and partners on what gets built.

What You’ll Own – Architecture

• The software blueprint for the full ground network: radio access processing nodes, packet routing and core control planes, constellation-aware orchestration, and operations and administration platforms
• Full-stack development across distributed cloud and edge environments
• Moving network applications to cloud-native microservices with container orchestration, service mesh and well-designed APIs

What You’ll Own – Performance and Edge

• Design and integration of virtualised and containerised network functions
• High-performance data plane work (DPDK, SR-IOV, eBPF) and real-time Linux kernel tuning to reach near line-rate processing on distributed nodes

What You’ll Own – Leadership and Delivery

• Leading design reviews and mentoring engineers to deliver telecom-grade platforms
• Working with customers, partners and network architects to shape requirements and take ground network features through to delivery

What We’re Looking For – Essential

• Degree in computer science, software engineering, electrical engineering or similar
• 10+ years in software engineering across cloud, distributed systems and edge environments
• Strong in several of C/C++, Go, Python, Java or Rust
• Extensive hands-on Kubernetes, Docker and Helm
• Infrastructure as code and configuration management (Terraform, Ansible), plus network automation with NETCONF and YANG
• Distributed systems tooling: REST, gRPC, Kafka or NATS, JSON and YAML
• Observability and telemetry with Prometheus and Grafana
• High-performance packet processing (DPDK, eBPF) and low-latency systems tuning
• Solid networking: TCP/IP, UDP, routing and performance optimisation

What We’re Looking For – Useful

• Master’s in computer science, software engineering or telecoms
• 3GPP 5G NTN standards, especially Release 17/18 across NG-RAN and 5G Core
• Telecom software such as PCF/PCRF, IMS and VoLTE/TAS
• ESA, defence or other regulated environments

Get in touch for a confidential conversation: Imogen@waverecruitment.co.uk