About Lodestar
Lodestar is the software-first space prime for the hardware abundant era. We believe the next generation of space systems will be defined not by launch, fuel, and batteries, but by software, compute, and autonomous effects.
Space is becoming an increasingly contested warfighting domain, with growing threats to the satellites and critical infrastructure underpinning modern life. Maintaining Western strategic advantage will require a new generation of space capabilities built for the speed, complexity and scale of future conflict.
Lodestar is addressing this challenge by building superintelligent spacecraft capable of operating autonomously in orbit. Combining our capabilities in advanced adversarial tracking & characterisation, onboard edge compute and autonomous effect delivery, our technology enables spacecraft to execute complex rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), detect and classify objects, predict intent and respond to orbital threats - even in denied environments. By integrating sensing, reasoning and action into a single autonomous system, we aim to deliver decisive situational awareness and space superiority for defence and commercial operators.
Backed by elite deep-tech venture capital, international space agencies and government stakeholders, Lodestar is rapidly expanding its footprint across the U.S. Space Force, the Department of War, and major commercial satellite operators. We are a lean, high-autonomy team of engineers and operators building the space defense infrastructure of tomorrow.
Join us.
About the Job
At Lodestar, as a Simulations Software Engineer , 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 mid-senior level. 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.
6+ years of industry experience, including end-to-end ownership of a simulation stack or a major simulation subsystem
Track record architecting simulation infrastructure - deciding what to model at what fidelity, and defending those trade-offs to engineering stakeholders
Depth in real-time distributed system design: determinism, time synchronisation, clock management, and reproducibility across nodes
Experience standing up HIL benches or SIL pipelines from scratch, including CI integration and automated regression testing
Experience mentoring engineers and setting technical direction across team boundaries
Comfortable deriving requirements from first principles
Preferred Skills & Experience
Familiarity with orbital mechanics and Basilisk
Experience with physics engines and rigid-body dynamics
Sensor modelling…