Senior Spacecraft Systems Engineer – Software

About the role

CesiumAstro is actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward-thinking individuals to join our team as a Senior Spacecraft Systems Engineer – Software. We take pride in our dynamic and cross-functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands-on, interactive, and autonomous work, CesiumAstro is the place for you.

To conform with the United States Government Space Technology Export Regulations, the applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., conditional resident, asylee or refugee (protected individuals as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Responsibilities

• Translate system-level operational concepts, customer requirements, and architecture into detailed software requirements, verification strategies, and integrated technical solutions for complex embedded systems.
• Serve as a critical bridge between Systems Engineering and Software Engineering, ensuring requirements are properly decomposed, traceable, testable, and aligned to overall program objectives.
• Analyze customer, mission, and system-level requirements and decompose them into clear, verifiable software-level requirements.
• Ensure software requirements maintain traceability to higher-level system requirements, architecture, and Concept of Operations (CONOPS).
• Collaborate with systems, software, and hardware teams to refine requirements for completeness, feasibility, and technical accuracy.
• Support requirements management processes, baseline control, and change impact assessments.
• Identify requirement gaps, ambiguities, and risks early in the development lifecycle.
• Develop software verification approach including verification descriptions, methods (test, analysis, demonstration, inspection), levels, and acceptance criteria aligned to system and program requirements.
• Identify required verification configurations, including hardware setups, software loads, firmware versions, and test environments.
• Support verification cross-reference matrices (VCRM), traceability matrices, and evidence packages.
• Partner with test and software teams to ensure efficient execution of planned verification activities.
• Serve as a technical liaison between Systems Engineering and Software Engineering teams.
• Support software integration planning, readiness reviews, and release coordination.
• Evaluate impacts of software changes to system behavior, interfaces, and verification scope.
• Participate in architecture, design, and interface reviews to ensure requirements alignment.
• Support issue resolution involving system functionality, interoperability, and software performance.
• Apply working knowledge of embedded systems architectures, constraints, and development environments.
• Understand hardware/software interfaces, communication protocols, and subsystem interactions.
• Support interface definition and validation between embedded devices, processors, sensors, payloads, and external systems.
• Assess integration and verification implications of firmware, software, and hardware revisions.
• Support Program Increment (PI) planning, staffing assessments, and execution readiness activities.
• Prioritize verification and requirements activities to meet schedule and milestone commitments.
• Mentor junior engineers on requirements quality, traceability, and verification planning.
• Drive continuous improvement in systems/software collaboration, process efficiency, and engineering rigor.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Systems Engineering, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical discipline.
• 5–8 years of experience in systems engineering, software engineering, embedded systems, or integration environments.
• Experience decomposing system requirements into software-level requirements.
• Experience creating verification plans, descriptions, procedures, or acceptance criteria.
• Strong understanding of embedded systems and software development lifecycles.
• Experience with hardware/software interfaces and communication protocols.
• Ability to interpret and apply system-level CONOPS to engineering execution.

Qualifications

• Programming Languages: Python, C++, C, Java, Bash, or similar.
• Development Tools: Git, IDEs, debuggers, CI/CD platforms.
• Operating Systems: Linux, Windows, Unix.
• Protocols/Interfaces: TCP/IP, UDP, Serial, USB, Ethernet, APIs.
• Other Tools: Requirements tools, issue tracking systems, automated test tools.

Pay

$133,000 – $161,000 a year

Benefits

• Company stock options.
• Health, dental, vision, HSA, and FSA benefits.
• Life and disability insurance.
• Retirement plans.