What are the responsibilities and job description for the Head of Flight Software position at Castelion?
About Castelion
Castelion is bringing a new approach to defense development and production: one that focuses on short, iterative design cycles, rapid testing in development, and modern commercial manufacturing strategies for production at scale. We’re designing, building, and testing next generation long range strike weapons systems to give America and its Allies a definitive edge and deter future conflicts.
Head of Flight Software
As the Head of Flight Software Engineering, you will lead the development of innovative flight software for Castelion’s advanced missile systems, playing a critical role in achieving our mission of peace through deterrence. This role demands a highly motivated individual with deep expertise in flight software development, a passion for mentoring teams, and a commitment to delivering robust, mission-critical systems. You will oversee all aspects of flight software design, development, integration, and testing, ensuring that Castelion's cutting-edge systems perform reliably under the most demanding conditions.
Responsibilities
• Lead and mentor a team of flight software engineers, fostering a collaborative, high-performance culture.
• Define and execute the software architecture, design, and implementation strategy for missile flight software systems.
• Collaborate closely with guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) teams, hardware engineers, and systems engineers to ensure seamless software-hardware integration.
• Develop and maintain robust software development, continuous integration, and verification processes, tools, and standards to ensure high reliability and scalability.
• Oversee the development of software for real-time embedded systems, focusing on performance, safety, and mission-critical functionality.
• Lead testing efforts, including simulation, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), and flight tests, to validate system performance.
• Drive root cause analysis and corrective actions for software-related issues during integration and testing.
• Maintain an understanding of evolving software and hardware technologies, integrating advancements where applicable.
• Ensure compliance with industry standards, security protocols, and DoD requirements.
Basic Qualifications
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
• 10 years of experience in embedded software development with 5 years in a leadership role.
• Deep understanding of real-time operating systems (RTOS), C/C programming, and hardware-software integration.
• Experience with guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems and their software requirements.
• Proven track record of delivering reliable, high-performance flight software for complex systems.
• Expertise in testing methodologies, including simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and flight testing.
• Strong knowledge of software lifecycle management, configuration control, and versioning tools.
• Ability to work collaboratively across multidisciplinary teams in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• Excellent problem-solving, organizational, and leadership skills.
• Active or eligible for a Top Secret security clearance.
Preferred Skills and Experience
• Experience with missile or defense-related systems and compliance requirements.
• Familiarity with FPGA-based systems and embedded software optimization.
• Knowledge of cybersecurity principles and secure software development practices.
• Exposure to agile development methodologies.
Leadership Qualities
Bias to Action and Creative Problem Solving. Desire and experience questioning assumptions in ways that lead to break through ideas that are ultimately implemented. Successfully bring in applicable processes/concepts/materials from other industries to achieve efficiency gains. Ability to personally resolve minor issues in development without requiring significant support.
High Commitment, High Initiative. A successful candidate will have a genuine passion for Castelion’s mission and consistently look for ways to contribute to the company’s technical goals and prevent hardware blockers. Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding atmosphere. Strong sense of accountability and integrity.
Clear Communicator. Proactively communicates blockers. Trusted in previous roles to be voice of company with regulators, suppliers, gate keepers and customers. Capable of tactfully managing relationships with stakeholders to achieve company-desired outcomes without compromising relationships. Emails, IMs and verbal interactions are logical, drive clarity, and detailed enough to eliminate ambiguity.
ITAR Requirements:
• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
Employment with Castelion is governed on the basis of competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.
