Senior Earth Observation Engineer

Job details

Work model

On-site

Salary

$145,000 - $205,000

Location

San Francisco, CA

Hiring context

How this role compares at Loft Orbital Solutions

Loft Orbital Solutions has 57 live roles in MeritLog’s catalog across 7 job families, and 37 of them are in engineering. 31 of those listings publish a pay range, a disclosure rate of 54%.

This role's posted range of $145,000 - $205,000 sits above 64% of the 28 other Loft Orbital Solutions roles quoted over the same currency and period.

Counted across the job boards MeritLog tracks, at the time this page was served. Pay comparisons use only listings that publish a complete range in the same currency and period.

Job description

Wanna join the adventure? Are you passionate about optical payloads, image quality, and turning pixels into products customers can actually use? If so, this is the perfect role for you! Loft flies multiple satellites per year and is building the next generation of Earth observation capability - from payload design through calibration, processing, and delivery - across a growing fleet of spacecraft. We're looking for a Senior Earth Observation Engineer to serve as the technical authority for optical payloads, image quality, and Earth observation mission performance across Loft. This role requires expertise in imagery calibration, optical payloads, and image processing pipelines. You'll work closely with mission teams, customers, and payload suppliers to define performance requirements, drive payload development and test, support in-orbit calibration and commissioning, and ensure Loft can reliably process and deliver imagery to customers. You'll help build the data processing and image-quality foundation that turns raw payload data into a sellable product, enabling Loft to simulate, calibrate, and deliver imagery across diverse customer missions and to leverage the AI boom through vision-based Earth observation.