Senior Systems Operations Engineer

Glasgow, Alba / Scotland, G2 1AL, United Kingdom
Last month
Seniority
Senior
Posted
30 Mar 2026 (Last month)

As a Senior Systems Operations Engineer at Spire, you will be responsible for ensuring that on-orbit mission operations meet and sustain technical and service-level objectives. You will serve as the technical link between the development and operations phases of the mission lifecycle, ensuring that the constellation behaves as expected and that any deviations are rapidly understood, assessed, and resolved with sound engineering judgment.

This role is central to Spire’s strategy to deliver scalable, reliable, and technically assured services using model-based engineering and validated asset profiles. Your work will ensure that decisions affecting constellation performance are made with technical insight.

Role Responsibilities:

  • Own the technical quality of mission operations during the on-orbit service period, ensuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are well defined, monitored, and maintained.
  • Assess and design strategies to address underperformance, providing detailed technical insight and coordinating resolution strategies in collaboration with Systems Engineering, Mission Design, and SRE.
  • Define and manage the high-level structure and performance requirements of asset profiles, ensuring they accurately represent mission needs and provide a clear basis for verification. Work with System Owners and SMEs to ensure subsystem capabilities are properly characterised, and with SREs to ensure ongoing validation of in-orbit performance.
  • Bridge the gap between Systems Engineering, Mission Design, Program Management, Customer Service, and SRE by providing technical leadership during the mission service period. Define the tooling and functional monitoring needs that enable the SRE team to maintain constellation health and respond effectively to deviations.
  • Support SRE, Platform, and Customer Service leads in triaging constellation or satellite issues that deviate from nominal asset profile definitions, ensuring escalation paths and responses are technically justified.
  • Act as a technical reviewer and contributor during Mission Readiness Review (MRR) and pre-launch handover, ensuring operational teams are equipped with validated, well-understood assets and clearly defined expectations for mission performance.
  • Identify operational risks and propose mitigations related to in-orbit performance, platform limitations, or evolving CONOPS.
  • Ensure technical consistency and justification for on-orbit changes such as mode transitions, re-tasking, or adjustments to duty cycles or resource allocations. Lead the rollout of complex fleet-wide changes when CONOPS are being updated, ensuring risks and dependencies are managed.
  • Collaborate across SRE, Platform, and Systems teams to codify lessons learned into reusable operational standards, documentation, and improved design practices for future missions.
  • Derive and maintain Operational Requirements by helping project teams translate mission and system-level requirements into operational-level non-functional requirements (SLOs, latency, freshness, availability), with verification methods and traceability.
  • Support configuration control during service, helping manage the versioned operational baseline (limits, parameters, tasking configurations) and working with SREs, System Owners, and Customer Service to prevent configuration drift across the fleet.
  • Support the definition and coverage of FDIR (Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery) logic, ensuring coverage against top failure modes and reducing residual operational risk over time.

Basic Qualifications:

  • BSc in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, Computer Science, or other relevant technical discipline.
  • 3+ years of experience in system performance monitoring, root cause analysis, and anomaly resolution.
  • Solid understanding of space system behaviour on orbit, including thermal dynamics, power management, RF communications, and tasking impacts.
  • Ability to translate system-level engineering context into clear operational guidance and tooling requirements.
  • Familiarity with SLA-driven architectures, system observability, and mission assurance principles.
  • Clear communication skills to align stakeholders across engineering, operations, and customer delivery.
  • Familiarity with software tools and frameworks used in operations, including strong Python, SQL skills and GitHub-based workflows.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • 3+ years of experience supporting operations of multi-satellite constellations.
  • Knowledge of asset profiling approaches and system models (including fault profiles, mode transitions, and performance boundaries).
  • Understanding of ground-segment tooling, SRE practices, or telemetry/telecommand systems.
  • Experience working with cross-functional, multi-time zone teams across engineering and operations.
  • Background in satellite mission design, including the transition from development to operations. LI-MK1

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. LI-MK1


Global Perks

🛰️ Name Your Satellite Program (NYSP)
🚀 Launch Attendance
🌴 Generous Time Off Policy
🎓 Education Assistance Program
🥰 Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
📈 Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
👣 Family Leave
💪 Fitness Reimbursement
🧡 Employee Referral Program
🍉 Healthy snacks & beverages in every office

About Spire

Weimprove life on Earth with data from space.

Spire Global is a space-to-cloud analytics company that owns and operates the largest multi-purpose constellation of satellites. Its proprietary data and algorithms provide the most advanced maritime, aviation, and weather tracking in the world. In addition to its constellation, Spire’s data infrastructure includes a global ground station network and 24/7 operations that provide real-time global coverage of every point on Earth.



Spire is Global and our success draws upon the diverse viewpoints, skills and experiences of our employees. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or veteran status.

To help maintain a safe and secure workplace for Spire employees, all candidates who receive a conditional offer will be required to complete a background check. This may include criminal history and employment verification.

Please take a moment to review Spire's Global Data Privacy Notice for Employees, Contractors, Candidates and Visitors, as well as Spire's Privacy Policy.



Kindly be advised that communication regarding your application may come from @spire.com, @recruiting.spire.com, or from Candidate.fyi (our scheduling tool).


Related Jobs

View all jobs

Senior Robotics Systems Engineer

Holt Executive Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
£60,000 – £90,000 pa

Senior Satellite Systems Solution Architect

Enterprise Recruitment Rawtenstall, Lancashire, BB4 7ND, United Kingdom
£80,000 – £100,000 pa

Production Planner

Matchtech Fareham, United Kingdom

Senior Product Safety Engineer

BAE Systems Blackburn, Lancashire, BB1 7DP, United Kingdom
£51,772 – £56,766 pa Hybrid Clearance Required

Senior Product Safety Engineer

BAE Systems Preston, Lancashire, United Kingdom
£51,772 – £56,766 pa Hybrid Clearance Required

Senior Product Safety Engineer

BAE Systems Warton, Lancashire, LA5 9QU, United Kingdom
£51,772 – £56,766 pa Hybrid Clearance Required

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Where to Advertise Space Jobs in the UK (2026 Guide)

Advertising space jobs in the UK requires a different approach to most technical hiring. The candidate pool spans satellite engineers, propulsion specialists, mission analysts, ground segment software developers, space systems architects and commercial space professionals — a highly specific multidisciplinary community that general job boards are poorly equipped to reach. The strongest space candidates are often embedded in ESA programmes, academic research groups, UK Space Agency-funded projects or established primes, and move between roles through sector-specific networks, industry bodies and conference communities rather than mainstream platforms. This guide, published by UKSpaceJobs.co.uk, covers where to advertise space industry roles in the UK in 2026, how the main platforms compare, what employers should expect to pay, and what the data says about hiring across different role types.

Space Jobs UK 2026: What to Expect Over the Next 3 Years

The UK space sector is in the middle of something that feels genuinely historic. A combination of government commitment, private capital, and technological progress has transformed Britain's position in the global space economy from a capable but secondary player into a nation with serious sovereign ambitions — and a jobs market that is expanding to match them. This is not the space industry of previous generations, defined by a small number of government agencies, a handful of prime contractors, and career pathways accessible only to a narrow band of elite engineers and scientists. The new space economy is broader, faster-moving, and more commercially driven than anything the sector has previously seen. Satellite manufacturing has been democratised by small sat technology. Launch is becoming domestic. Space data is flowing into applications across agriculture, insurance, climate monitoring, maritime, and defence at a scale that is creating entirely new categories of commercial hiring. And the defence and national security dimensions of space have elevated the sector's strategic importance to a degree that is driving sustained public investment in the talent pipeline. For job seekers, the UK space jobs market of 2026 represents an opportunity that is both more accessible and more technically demanding than at any previous point. The candidates who will thrive over the next three years are those who understand where the sector is heading — which programmes are moving from development into operation, which technologies are defining the architecture of modern space systems, and how the definition of a space career is expanding well beyond the spacecraft engineering core toward a much wider ecosystem of roles across the full space value chain. This article breaks down what the UK space jobs market is likely to look like through to 2028 — covering the titles emerging right now, the technologies driving employer demand, the skills that will matter most, and how to position your career at the leading edge of one of the most exciting sectors in the UK economy.

New Space Employers to Watch in 2026: UK and Global Organisations Driving the Future of Space Careers

The space industry is entering a new era of growth, innovation, and commercial opportunity. Satellites, space exploration, Earth observation, space data analytics, launch systems and space infrastructure are all areas seeing rapid expansion, bringing demand for engineers, scientists, operations specialists and software developers. For professionals exploring opportunities on www.UKSpaceJobs.co.uk , identifying employers that are scaling, securing major contracts, attracting investment, or establishing UK operations is vital. This article highlights the most exciting space employers to watch in 2026, including UK space start‑ups, established aerospace organisations with UK teams, and global firms investing in British space talent.