Flight Software Engineer

The Role

We're looking for a Senior Flight Software Engineer to own the software that flies on our spacecraft. You'll be responsible for the payload flight software—written in Rust—spanning attitude and pointing state machines, on-board command handling, and telemetry and data storage. Today this work is distributed across several engineers; we need a senior technical owner to unify the architecture, set the patterns and conventions the team builds on, and drive the software toward a near-term on-orbit demonstration.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead and owner for payload flight software, from architecture through on-orbit operations
• Design, develop, and test flight software in Rust for attitude and pointing state machines, command handling, and telemetry/data storage
• Define the software architecture, coding patterns, and conventions adopted across the flight software team
• Establish and uphold the bar for flight-quality software: determinism, fault tolerance, testability, and safe behavior under failure
• Design and implement fault detection, isolation, and recovery (FDIR) behaviors at the software level
• Build and maintain automated test infrastructure, including simulation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing
• Collaborate closely with GNC, avionics, electrical, and systems engineers to define interfaces and system behavior
• Support spacecraft integration, environmental test campaigns, and launch and early-orbit operations
• 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

• 5+ years of experience (or equivalent practical experience) developing flight software or software for other high-reliability, safety-critical systems
• Experience with software that has flown on orbit, or equivalent deployment experience demonstrating judgment about what flight-quality software requires
• Strong systems programming skills in Rust, C, or C++, with willingness to work primarily in Rust
• Experience with real-time and embedded systems, including resource-constrained and fault-tolerant designs
• Experience designing and implementing state machines, command/telemetry handling, or similar spacecraft software functions
• Experience with hardware/software integration and testing on real hardware
• Demonstrated ability to lead technically: setting architecture, establishing conventions, and mentoring other engineers

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or advanced degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field
• Prior experience as a technical lead or architect for a spacecraft flight software effort
• Production Rust experience, particularly in embedded or systems contexts
• Experience with attitude determination and control or pointing systems from the software side
• Experience with FDIR design, redundancy management, and autonomous fault response