Director of Software Engineering

Be one of the Bedo 100

Albedo is making Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) mainstream, building the infrastructure to enable every satellite mission to enter this new orbital domain. We build buses, integrated satellites, and turnkey missions for customers to thrive in VLEO, below 300 km, where proximity compounds performance and drag self-cleans debris.   As part of the first 100 employees at Albedo, you will have a big impact on Albedo’s trajectory to proliferating VLEO — whether you’re 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 — in 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. You’ll join a team that has already proven what others said wasn’t 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.

About This Role:

Albedo is building software for satellites that fly in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO). As Director of Software Engineering, you'll lead the teams developing our flight software, GNC, ground systems, and applied AI, and ensure our missions meet their autonomy and performance objectives. This role will ensure long-term growth and adaptation as the pace of software and autonomy accelerates for VLEO and beyond.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead the software engineering organization — FSW, GNC, applied AI, ground — 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:

• $234,323 - $269,600 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   Applicants must be a U.S. Person as defined under 22 CFR 120.62   #LI-Onsite   Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented people tend to only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Albedo, we'd rather hear from you. We care more about how you think than which boxes you check. We value people who do the math, make their assumptions explicit, and ask the annoying questions: what breaks, what's the failure mode, what has to be true for this to work? If that sounds like you, apply, even if you don't meet every line.