Thales Group · Aerospace, Defense & IoT
SaaS tooling for configuring and coordinating IoT infrastructure across satellite ground stations with real-time telemetry pipelines.
The Client
Thales Group is a French multinational company that designs, develops, and manufactures electrical systems as well as devices and equipment for the aerospace, defense, transportation, and security sectors. Headquartered in Paris, the company is a leader in digital identity, defense systems, aerospace equipment, and ground transportation solutions, serving government agencies, commercial enterprises, and critical infrastructure operators globally.
Headquarters
Paris
Sector
Aerospace & Defense
Project Overview
Backend services and microservices for satellite IoT coordination, real-time telemetry with Kafka under strict latency constraints, and React dashboards for operations teams.
The Challenge
Coordinate satellite IoT under hard real-time limits.
Thales needed SaaS tooling capable of configuring and coordinating IoT infrastructure across multiple satellite ground stations. The systems required real-time telemetry pipelines operating under strict latency and uptime constraints with 99.9% availability targets. Operations teams needed interfaces to monitor and manage the distributed infrastructure, while backend services had to handle millions of IoT data points flowing from geographically dispersed ground station locations.
The Solution
Real-time telemetry, coordinated across ground stations.
Built real-time telemetry pipelines using Kafka to handle millions of data streams under strict latency requirements. Developed Java and Kotlin microservices for satellite configuration APIs and IoT coordination across ground stations. Implemented database solutions with Postgres and MongoDB optimized for time-series telemetry data. Created Python scripts for automation and system orchestration. Built React dashboards for operations teams to monitor satellite and ground station infrastructure in real-time. Deployed on Azure with Docker and Kubernetes for consistent, scalable operations across distributed environments.
Technology Stack
Real-time telemetry on Kafka, Java and Kotlin microservices for satellite coordination, React operations dashboards, and cloud-native deployment on Azure with Docker and Kubernetes.
Kafka
Apache Kafka formed the backbone of the real-time telemetry pipelines, processing millions of IoT events from distributed ground stations. Event streaming handled satellite data under strict latency constraints below 100ms. The architecture ensured reliable data delivery with exactly-once semantics while maintaining the throughput required for continuous IoT monitoring.
Results & Impact
Outcomes that hold up under load.
- Real-time telemetry pipelines processing millions of IoT events under strict latency constraints
- SaaS platform coordinating satellite IoT infrastructure across distributed ground stations
- Java and Kotlin microservices providing high-availability APIs with 99.9% uptime
- Kafka event streaming handling satellite telemetry with sub-100ms latency
- Operations dashboards providing real-time visibility across ground station network
- Cloud-native deployment enabling zero-downtime updates and automated scaling
99.9%
Platform uptime
<100ms
Telemetry latency
Millions
IoT events processed
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