Software Engineer (Satellite Payload Downlink)

- Software Engineer - Location: Espoo, Finland - Department: Fleet Control and Satellite Communications - Reports to: Engineering Manager, Satellite Payload Downlink - Employment type: Permanent - Workplace model: Hybrid - Employment is subject to applicable security screening (incl. SUPO, where required) Why this role matters: As a Software Engineer, you'll help keep data flowing from our satellites to the ground, reliably and at scale. You'll join the team responsible for downlinking payload data from ICEYE's SAR constellation: integrating with ground station streams, decoding, error correction, decryption, and routing data onward for processing. Ground stations are globally distributed, and data has to arrive complete and on time. You'll own components within this pipeline, working closely with more senior engineers to keep the system reliable as the constellation scales. Who We Are ICEYE delivers space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to governments and allied nations. This includes sovereign and turnkey ISR missions leveraging ICEYE's world-leading synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite technology, as well as access to data from the world's largest SAR satellite constellation. These capabilities enable partners to detect and respond to critical changes anywhere on Earth with unprecedented speed and accuracy - day or night and in any weather, supported by ultra high-resolution imagery and high-frequency revisits. As a trusted partner for defense, intelligence, security, and maritime domain awareness, ICEYE's near real-time data creates a tactical advantage for mission-critical operations. Designed for dual use, the platform also serves civil protection and commercial users for natural-catastrophe intelligence, insurance, maritime monitoring including oil-spill detection, and finance, contributing to global security and community resilience. ICEYE is headquartered in Finland and operates globally across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. We have more than 900 employees, united by a shared vision: improving life on Earth by becoming the global source of truth in Earth Observation. Your day-to-day responsibilities - Build and maintain components of the payload downlink pipeline, including decoding, error correction, decryption, and routing of satellite data - Anticipate edge cases and failure modes in your area of ownership, and design for reliability under real-world conditions - Debug and resolve production issues in a distributed, latency-sensitive system, with support from senior team members - Write clean, tested, maintainable code in Go or a similar language - Collaborate with ground station connectivity, downlink, and downstream data teams to keep data flowing end to end - Contribute to code reviews, testing practices, and the team's engineering standards - Use AI-assisted tools where they genuinely speed up delivery, debugging, or learning What we're looking for Must haves: - Proven professional software engineering experience, ideally in backend or distributed systems, with enough time in production to have developed good instincts for what breaks and why - Proficiency in Go or a comparable statically typed language, with willingness to work primarily in Go - Hands-on experience with containerized environments such as Docker - Experience building or operating production systems where reliability and correctness matter, not just scripts or prototypes - Working knowledge of relational databases such as PostgreSQL - Strong debugging and problem-solving skills, with a structured approach to new or unfamiliar issues - Pragmatic experience in using AI/LLM tools to support software development - Strong communication skills in English and a collaborative approach to working with a team Nice to haves: - Hands-on experience with AWS - Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, or GitOps workflows - Exposure to data infrastructure at scale, streaming…