Founding Lead Flight Software Engineer
- Compensation
- $185K–$275K / yr
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA
- Work setup
- Hybrid
- Seniority
- Lead
- Employment
- Contract
- Experience
- 8+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- 8+ years developing, testing, or flight-qualifying flight software or real-time embedded software for spacecraft, launch vehicles, aircraft, robotics, or other high-reliability systems.
- Prior experience leading technical workstreams, managing engineers, mentoring junior and mid-level engineers, or building high-performing engineering teams.
- Demonstrated ability to own complex software systems from early architecture through implementation, test, validation, and operational readiness.
- Strong fundamentals in embedded systems, real-time software, concurrency, and computer architecture.
- Expert proficiency in embedded C and/or C++ (Rust a plus) and deep experience with at least one real-time operating system (e.g., FreeRTOS, VxWorks, RTEMS, Zephyr) or bare-metal embedded development.
- Experience writing low-level software against real hardware: device drivers, BSPs, interrupt handling, DMA, and digital interfaces and buses.
- Comfort reading schematics and datasheets and partnering with hardware engineers through board bring-up and debugging.
- Experience with fault-tolerant software design, FDIR, watchdogs, redundancy management, and safe-mode behavior.
- Experience taking software beyond the bench into integration, hardware-in-the-loop, processor-in-the-loop, or representative testbeds.
- Experience with modern software practices: version control, code review, automated testing, and continuous integration.
- Lab fluency: comfortable with debuggers (JTAG/SWD), oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, EGSE, and test automation.
- Ability to work independently with limited direction, identify the right next problem to solve, and drive technical work from ambiguity to tested flight software.
- Ability to make practical system-level tradeoffs across performance, schedule, cost, reliability, testability, and mission risk.
- Ability to lead through influence in a cross-functional environment spanning avionics, GNC, power, propulsion, mechanical, systems, and mission operations.
- You are an exceptional flight software engineer with strong fundamentals and the ability to reason from first principles.
- You are a technical leader who raises the bar for the people around you.
- You have managed, mentored, or led engineers before and know how to create clarity, accountability, and momentum in ambiguous environments.
- You are comfortable owning large, ambiguous, mission-critical problems without waiting for detailed direction.
- You can move fluidly between architecture, code, the bench, integration, test, team leadership, and system-level tradeoffs.
- You are not just interested in writing code; you want to see it run on real hardware, in real environments, under real constraints.
- You are excited by flight-grade software that has to work the first time and keep working when things go wrong.
- You are willing to learn unfamiliar domains quickly and deeply, whether that means avionics hardware, FPGAs, radiation effects, RTOS internals, GNC, cybersecurity, or flight operations.
- You have strong opinions loosely held. You can defend a technical position, accept feedback, change course when the system demands it, and make appropriate tradeoffs in support of the mission.
- You are collaborative, low-ego, and rigorous.
- You want founding-level ownership and are motivated by building a company, not just completing assigned tasks.
- You are excited to help build not only the product, but also the engineering organization behind it.
Full description
Founding Lead Flight Software Engineer
Equity: 0.3% – 1% depending on experience
About Us
We're a stealth team building space hardware at the edge of what's currently possible — high-stakes, flight-grade systems where the engineering bar is unforgiving and the upside is enormous. While we can't share full details yet, our founding and early engineering team includes talent from SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and Impulse Space, the group includes people who've pulled off feats almost no one else on Earth has.
Role Overview
We are seeking a Lead Flight Software Engineer to own our flight software stack from first principles — the software that commands, controls, and keeps our spacecraft alive.
This is a senior technical leadership role. You will not only define and execute the flight software architecture, but also help build the flight software team, set technical standards, mentor engineers, and establish the systems, processes, and culture required to develop flight-grade software.
This is not a narrow coding role. You will own the full flight software stack: bootloaders, board support packages, and device drivers up through command and telemetry, scheduling, GNC and autonomy integration, fault management, and the test infrastructure that proves it all works. You will partner closely with avionics on flight computer selection, interfaces, and bring-up, and make system-level trades across software, hardware, autonomy, and reliability.
The ideal candidate has direct experience with spacecraft flight software, real-time embedded systems, hardware/software integration, verification, and technical team leadership. We recognize that very few people have all of this. What matters most is that you have exceptional fundamentals, have led real software systems from concept toward flight, have managed or mentored engineers in high-performance technical environments, and can operate independently in ambiguity while making sound engineering tradeoffs. You will have direct ownership over one of the company's core technical challenges.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the flight software architecture, from early design through development, integration, test, qualification, and flight operations.
- Lead development of real-time embedded flight software: board support packages, bootloaders, device drivers, RTOS configuration, scheduling, and inter-task communication.
- Build command and telemetry handling, onboard data storage and downlink management, time management, and onboard sequencing and autonomy.
- Architect fault detection, isolation, and recovery (FDIR), safe modes, watchdogs, redundancy management, and fault tolerance appropriate for flight-grade autonomous systems.