Software Engineer
US$99,000 – US$250,000 / yr base salary
Posted 7 Sep 2026
Advertised as “Software Engineer I,II,III: Simulations ”
BranchFactor Summary
The original posting with the fluff stripped out
- Management level
- Individual contributor
| Base salary | US$99,000 – US$250,000 / yr |
|---|
Field of studyAerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics (or related)
Study levelBachelor's or higher
About Lodestar
Lodestar's mission is to develop the first "Protect and Defend" capability for high-value space assets in orbit. Our flagship product MITHRIL is the critical hardware & software necessary to augment any off-the-shelf spacecraft with the ability to autonomously detect, characterise, and reversibly neutralise orbital threats. By building on the proven space heritage of our best-in-class satellite-bus partners and fully integrating MITHRIL as a single platform, we deliver a fully autonomous end-to-end protection spacecraft service.
About the Job
At Lodestar, as a Software Engineer: Simulation, you'll build the environment in which MITHRIL is developed, tested and proven. Every autonomy behaviour we fly is validated in simulation first, which makes the simulator one of the highest-leverage pieces of software in the company: if it isn't faithful, nothing downstream can be trusted.
You'll develop high-fidelity sensor and environment models in Unreal Engine, stand up the software- and hardware-in-the-loop benches that our flight software runs against, and design the distributed services that let scenarios run reproducibly across machines and in CI. You'll work directly with the perception, prediction, decision, and missions teams to decide what needs simulating, at what fidelity, and why.
We proudly have an "extreme ownership" oriented engineering culture.
What You’ll Do
- Build and extend the mission simulation environment that Lodestar's autonomy stack is developed and validated against
- Develop high-fidelity sensor and environment models - electro-optical cameras, orbital lighting and illumination
- Build software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop test benches so that flight software can be trialed against realistic simulated missions
- Design distributed simulation services to run mission scenarios at scale
- Own the internal simulation tooling, telemetry, and regression frameworks
Basic Qualifications
We are hiring this role at three levels. All levels require a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Aerospace, Robotics, Mechanical or Electrical Engineering, a related field, or equivalent experience.
Software Engineer I
- 0–2 years of professional experience in simulation, robotics, games. Can also include Internships and research placements.
- Working proficiency in C++ and Python
- Exposure to ROS 2 in an academic, research, or professional setting