Principal Software Engineer - Space Simulation Platform

Principal Software Engineer - Space Simulation Platform

Location: Bangalore (Office, no remote/Hybrid)

Salary range: 40 ~ 45 LPA

Description

We are building a high-fidelity software platform for space. The system spans a

high-performance physics simulation engine, a scientific data pipeline, a REST and

event-streaming backend, and a native desktop client with 3D rendering.

This is not an architecture-only role. The Principal Software Engineer is the final

technical authority and is expected to be hands-on across all layers — writing simulation

code, designing data interfaces, making HPC infrastructure decisions, and being the

person who can sit down, open an editor, and solve the hard problem anywhere in the

system.

You will own the architecture, make and document the decisions that stick, and be

directly accountable for correct implementation across the team.

What You Will Actually Do

● Own the end-to-end software architecture and be the final arbiter of all design

decisions across every layer

● Write and review production-quality numerical simulation code in a compiled

systems language

● Design and implement the data access layer that sits between HPC job output and

the application backend — handling large binary scientific datasets, incremental

writes, and on-the-fly computation at query time

● Define and enforce interface contracts between the simulation core, the data layer,

the API backend, and the desktop client

● Design the HPC job lifecycle — submission, monitoring, interactive and batch

execution modes, command channels, and event streaming to connected clients

● Build and maintain the application backend including real-time event fan-out,

role-based access control, and report generation

● Make technology selection decisions with explicit written rationale that survives

team turnover

● Write detailed design documents that junior engineers implement from —

unambiguous, complete, and correct

● Mentor engineers across the stack; conduct reviews with the depth of someone

who wrote the code themselves

Requirements

Orbital Mechanics and Astrodynamics

● Solid working knowledge of analytical orbit propagation — not just calling a

library, but understanding what it computes, its accuracy envelope, and where it

breaks down

● Hands-on experience with numerical orbit propagation using adaptive step

integrators, with full perturbation models: atmospheric drag, higher-order gravity,

solar radiation pressure, third-body effects

● Familiarity with standard orbit element formats, epoch handling, and the practical

limits of catalogue-quality data

● Working knowledge of coordinate frame transforms and access to authoritative

ephemeris sources

● Understanding of close-approach geometry and conjunction screening concepts

● Familiarity with empirical upper atmosphere models and their sensitivity to solar

activity inputs

High-Performance Simulation Core (Compiled Language)

● Strong, recent hands-on experience in a compiled systems language (C++

preferred) writing numerically intensive code that must be correct first and

performant second

● Shared-memory parallelism: threading models, race condition analysis, false

sharing avoidance, thread-safe logging

● Memory layout design for cache-friendly access across large object populations

● Integration with third-party C scientific libraries without memory leaks or

undefined behaviour

● Attitude representation: quaternion algebra, renormalisation, singularity avoidance

— able to articulate from first principles why gimbal-lock representations are

unacceptable in a simulation context

● Adaptive step integration: step acceptance and rejection logic, error estimation,

handling of state variables that change continuously during propulsive events

● Spacecraft sensor and actuator modelling: understanding of the measurement chain

from physical sensor to estimated state, and actuator dynamics including

saturation behaviour

Scientific Data Pipeline

● Design and implementation of binary scientific data formats for large time-series

datasets produced by long-running HPC jobs: incremental write patterns, crash

safety, and reading partially written output from a concurrent consumer

● On-the-fly computation at query time over large catalogues — understanding the

trade-offs between pre-computation and real-time evaluation

● Ground truth vs estimated state: designing a system where operators never see true

simulation state, onl…