Laney Miller’s coding keeps flying higher.
Now a lead flight software engineer at True Anomaly, Miller got her start writing code for Chinook helicopters at Collins Aerospace. “I thought it was really cool to see my code make a direct impact on pilots,” she told Payload. “I got to talk to people flying the helicopters [that] I wrote software for.”
From helicopters to hardware in orbit: But space called, and after moving to Denver, Miller joined Raytheon, now known as RTX ($RTX). She was working on ground software for the company’s GPS constellation—a good step toward space, but not close enough for her. “I wanted to move faster, and make a larger impact,” she said.
That opportunity came at York Space Systems, where she joined as one of the first flight software engineers.
During her tenure, York scaled from ~$80M to over $1B in contract revenue. “By the time I was leaving, I just wanted to do it again,” she said. “I missed the hyper-growth phase of a startup.”
Enter True Anomaly: True Anomaly offered both speed and purpose. “It was a similar phase of growth…but with a stronger mission—focused on space superiority and creating a safe environment for space,” Miller said.
For Miller, startups are about ownership. “I like getting dirty and actually doing the work,” she said. “They give me the ability to solve the problem now—rather than set up a meeting to talk about solving it later.”
A defining milestone: One of her proudest projects was developing and deploying a thermal control system for the Tranche 0 satellites in the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture constellation, for which Miller wrote the first thermal control system in software.
“We didn’t quite have all the hardware support we needed,” she said. “But seeing telemetry come back, and all systems nominal—that was one of the most rewarding moments of my career.”
What’s next? Miller’s now focused on True Anomaly’s GEO expansion—a leap that brings higher stakes, and harsher radiation environments. “The higher my code flies, the more rewarding it feels,” she said.
