About Cowboy Space Corp

Mission

Cowboy Space Corporation is solving the global energy crisis by building the infrastructure for abundant, resilient space-based solar energy. We are tackling one of humanity’s most complex engineering challenges with a world-class team dedicated to delivering a revolutionary power platform. Cowboy Space Corporation is transforming how civilization powers, computes and connects - from orbit to Earth.

Background

Cowboy Space Corporation is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our modular, scalable satellites collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit to enable multiple integrated applications: transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and providing secure, high bandwidth optical data transport.

Current energy and data systems rely on complex logistics and outdated infrastructure. Cowboy Space Corporation overcomes these challenges by enabling direct, on-demand, secure, and scalable energy distribution and data processing from space. This will revolutionize how we operate in orbit and on Earth, supporting the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM (In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing) operations, remote regions, and military bases.

Baiju Bhatt founded Cowboy Space Corporation in 2024. Inspired by his father’s work with NASA Langley Research Center, Baiju earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford before co-founding Robinhood, now a public company that has helped over 20 million Americans access the financial system. Cowboy Space Corporation has raised ~$365 million from Index Ventures, Interlagos, Construct Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and others.

This is an ambitious mission that demands extraordinary talent. Cowboy Space Corporation’s team has worked at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis and NASA, and is based in San Carlos, CA. If you're ready to solve complex technical challenges and help build the most important energy company in the world, we want to hear from you.

The Role

We're looking for a Ground Station Software Engineer to own the software that forms the communications backbone between earth and space. You'll be responsible for the software - written in Python and Go - which will deliver secure highly reliable communications.

Responsibilities

Design and develop distributed software systems for ground station network operations and core infrastructure services.

Test and integrate software systems that run on both commercial and in-house developed hardware.

Build simulation and testing frameworks to validate system behavior before deployment

Collaborate with hardware engineers to integrate, test, and debug systems end-to-end

Write performant, reliable code for resource-constrained and mission-critical environments

Develop internal tools to support testing, automation, and operational workflows

Participate in system bring-up, integration, and launch preparation activities

Monitor and support on-orbit operations, including debugging and performance optimization

Contribute to system architecture decisions across software and hardware boundaries

Balance speed, reliability, and scalability in a fast-paced development environment

Investigate anomalies across hardware/software boundaries, perform root cause analysis, and drive fixes to closure

Mentor engineers on the team and review designs and code to raise overall software quality

Help drive the team toward a near-term on-orbit demonstration, making pragmatic scope and risk tradeoffs along the way

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field

2+ years of experience building production software systems

Strong programming skills in languages such as Python or Go

Experience working close to hardware, distributed systems, or real-time systems

Solid understanding of systems fundamentals (operating systems, networking, concurrency)