Data Engineer - Satellite Mission Operations & Payload

Key Responsibilities

• Satellite Data Analysis:
• Orbit Estimation & Pass Prediction
• Payload Data Processing
• Data Warehouse & Timeseries Management
• Architect and manage a unified satellite data warehouse for:
• TM: Telemetry
• TC: Telecommand logs
• PL Raw: Unprocessed payload data
• PL Processed: Analytics-ready, localized payload results
• Implement and optimize timeseries storage (e.g., TimescaleDB or equivalent open-source DB), handling high-volume ingest, retention policies, and storage cost controls
• Setup long-term backup and restore logic for all critical datasets with tested disaster-recovery procedures
• Data Integration Pipelines
• Collaborate with the engineering team to design and develop custom plugins for encoding, decoding and storing satellite data
• Data Governance, Security & Compliance
• Implement and monitor robust data validation, quality checks, and schema evolution for all ingested datasets
• Establish strict data retention schedules, historical playback mechanisms, and backup strategies
• Ensure data security: manage encryption in transit and at rest, control access privileges, and maintain audit trails
• Analytics Enablement & Reporting
• Expose clean, queryable interfaces for satellite operations teams, mission planners, and analytics applications
• Enable fast asset search, forecast generation, and bulk historical downloads (e.g., CSV)
• Support the payload UI frontend with reliable and performant data APIs
• Automation & Monitoring
• Develop high-availability ETL and data transformation services for raw and processed data
• Set up proactive monitoring, alerting, and logging for data pipeline health and storage usage
• Continuously improve system performance, scalability, and resilience to failures
• Documentation & Collaboration
• Maintain comprehensive technical documentation of data models, pipelines, and operational guidelines
• Work cross-functionally with software engineers, satellite operations, and payload teams
  

Requirements

• MCA/B.E./B.Tech/M.Tech in Computer Science, Aerospace/Electronics Engineering, Data Science, or relevant field
• Programming: Python and/or Java; advanced SQL; experience with at least one time-series or analytical DBMS (e.g., TimescaleDB, InfluxDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB)
• ETL/Data Pipelines: Experience with building and managing real-time and batch ETL/ELT workflows for large data volumes
• Orbit Determination (preferred): Proven experience with satellite dynamics, SGP4/TLE models, or astrodynamics libraries (e.g., Orekit, GMAT) is a strong plus
• Geospatial/Localization (preferred): Familiar with georeferencing payload data, GIS libraries (e.g., GDAL, GeoPandas), and map projections
• DevOps: Comfortable with Docker, Linux-based deployments, systemd services, and automated backup/cron
• Data Security: Implementing encryption, secure protocols (TLS/HTTPS), secure file systems, and user access controls
• Testing & Monitoring: Experience with test-driven development, continuous data validation, and pipeline monitoring tools
• Strong data analytics, problem-solving, and system optimization skills
• Ability to distill and document complex workflows
• Able to work independently and proactively in a mission-critical environment
• Familiarity with satellite data analysis and GIS is a plus
• Experience with processing/backup/restore of large data volumes, long-term archival
• Kubernetes or container orchestration experience
• Familiarity with object storage solutions
  

Benefits