What are the responsibilities and job description for the Lead Flight Software Engineer position at Motion Recruitment?
Our client is an ambitious aerospace start-up developing cutting-edge flight systems to redefine the future of space access and exploration. Their team is passionate about building next-generation spacecraft, autonomous systems, and mission-critical technologies. If you thrive in a fast-paced, hands-on environment and want to make an outsized impact, we want to hear from you.
As a Flight Software Engineer, you’ll be at the heart of their mission—designing, implementing, and testing the embedded software systems that run on our aircraft vehicles. You’ll collaborate across avionics, GNC, and systems engineering teams to bring real-time software to life for flight-critical systems.
Key Responsibilities
As a Flight Software Engineer, you’ll be at the heart of their mission—designing, implementing, and testing the embedded software systems that run on our aircraft vehicles. You’ll collaborate across avionics, GNC, and systems engineering teams to bring real-time software to life for flight-critical systems.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and implement real-time embedded flight software for aerospace systems.
- Develop and integrate drivers, communication protocols, and state machines on embedded targets.
- Interface with avionics hardware, including sensors, actuators, radios, and compute modules.
- Work closely with GNC engineers to support navigation and control algorithm implementation.
- Develop simulation tools and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test infrastructure.
- Participate in rigorous testing, validation, and debugging of software in lab and field environments.
- Support launch and mission operations by providing on-call expertise during critical events.
- B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
- 3 years of experience developing embedded software for aerospace or safety-critical systems.
- Proficient in C/C for real-time systems.
- Strong understanding of RTOS or bare-metal firmware development.
- Experience with software-hardware integration and debugging tools (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.).
- Familiarity with communication protocols (UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, Ethernet, etc.).
- Experience with spacecraft or UAV flight software.
- Familiarity with flight heritage software frameworks (e.g. NASA cFS, F Prime, or similar).
- Experience with version control (Git), CI/CD, and issue tracking tools.
- Exposure to fault-tolerant system design and redundancy architectures.
- Familiarity with Linux development environments and scripting in Python or Bash.
- Competitive salary and equity package.
- Flexible work hours and remote-friendly culture (depending on role).
- Opportunity to shape the future of a growing aerospace start-up.
- Hands-on work with cutting-edge aerospace systems and real-world flight missions.
- A collaborative, high-impact, no-ego team environment.
