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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Junior Space Systems Engineer - **Company:** Foundational - **Location:** London, UK - **Experience:** Starter - **Salary:** £35,000.0 - £45,000.0 - **Contract:** Internship / Graduate position - **Skills:** Systems Engineering, Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), Python (Programming Language), Linux System Administration, MATLAB, Zemax, Scripting, Orbital Mechanics, Build Management, Lidar - **Published:** August 20, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/details/5848358428 ## About the Role Level: Junior / early-career - ideal for someone coming off a graduate scheme, though exceptional recent graduates with strong project experience are very welcome, You don't need flight heritage or a decade of experience. We care far more about strong fundamentals, hunger, and the ability to learn fast in a hands-on environment., * A degree in space systems engineering, aerospace or mechanical or electrical engineering, physics, or a closely related field. * Strong engineering and physics fundamentals, and the instinct to reach for a first-principles estimate before an opinion. * Some practical engineering experience - a graduate scheme, internship, placement year, or a serious university project or competition team. What matters is that you've built something real and dealt with the consequences. * Hands-on instincts. You like building, aligning, breaking, and fixing hardware, not only simulating it. * Scripting ability for analysis and modelling (Python preferred; MATLAB or similar is fine). * Comfort with ambiguity and ownership. You're energised by a startup where scope is broad, priorities shift, and nobody hands you a fully-specified task list. * Clear communication and a collaborative, low-ego approach to working across software and hardware. * The right to work in the UK. Nice to have - genuinely optional * Hands-on experience with space hardware: CubeSats or smallsats, optical ground stations, LiDAR, or laser systems. Academic projects and competitions absolutely count. * Familiarity with orbital mechanics and the formats that go with it (TLEs, CPF/CRD). * Exposure to environmental or space qualification testing. * Optics fundamentals - geometrical and physical optics, radiometry, detectors and laser sources - or exposure to optical design software (Zemax, Code V). * Comfort in Linux environments, or experience writing instrument control and data-analysis code. * Awareness of laser safety standards (e.g. BS EN 60825). * FPGA or embedded work, particularly for timing applications. ## Description This is a hands-on engineering role where the successful candidate will be as happy working in the lab as they are behind a computer. You'll work in our space team but may get involved in ground systems as well - helping to define what we build, model it, then get hands-on to build, test, and prove it. You'll see the full lifecycle: early concept and trade studies, through modelling and design, into integration, environmental test, and validation against our ground network. It's physics-first, hands-on work with a quick path from your bench to orbit. You'll sit in a small team of software and hardware engineers who don't draw hard lines between disciplines, and you'll be expected to cross those lines too. Specifically, you'll get stuck into: * Systems engineering. Turning mission needs into requirements, interfaces, and budgets (mass, power, link, pointing, timing, error). Running trade studies and making the case for a design decision with numbers behind it. * Modelling & analysis. Building performance models - radiometry and link budgets, atmospheric transmission, pointing and attitude, detection probability - and using them to drive real design choices rather than to decorate them. * Design & build. Contributing to the design of small space-based payloads and ground subsystems: component selection, layout, tolerancing, and assembly of hardware and optical benches alongside our senior engineers. * Integration, test & verification. Assembling and aligning hardware, then putting it through environmental qualification (thermal, vibration, vacuum) and performance characterisation - and learning first-hand what survives launch. * Ground-to-space validation. Working with the ground systems team to validate ranging precision and pointing accuracy end-to-end, so the payload and the network behave as one system. * Owning your corner. Documenting designs, feeding lessons into the next iteration, and taking real responsibility for a slice of the system as we grow., * Real ownership. A high-impact role with genuine autonomy in a new startup - your contributions directly shape our product and our success. * Cutting-edge work. Meaningful, challenging, complex problems at the frontier of the space domain. * Equity that matters. Government-backed EMI scheme options in a fast-growing, VC-backed company. * A team worth learning from. A dynamic, collaborative environment built on innovation, creativity, and teamwork - with room to grow fast. * A mission you can believe in. What we build underpins the future of Earth observation and space traffic control. ## Related Videos - [Strange New Worlds: shaping the future of the digital age](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/677-strange-new-worlds-shaping-the-future-of-the-digital-age) - [Leveraging Large Language Models for Legacy Code Translation: Challenges and Solutions](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1157-leveraging-large-language-models-for-legacy-code-translation-challenges-and-solutions) - [How to develop an autonomous car end-to-end: Robotic Drive and the mobility revolution](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/22-how-to-develop-an-autonomous-car-end-to-end-robotic-drive-and-the-mobility-revolution) - [Robots are coming into the wild! 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