Software Development Engineer, Leo Flight Software Team

About the role

We are looking for an Embedded Software Development Engineer to build and scale - VirtSat (Leo's Virtual Satellite Simulation platform). VirtSat enables developers and pipelines across Leo to create, provision, and test virtual satellites, ground gateways, customer terminals, and TT&C antennas on EC2 bare-metal infrastructure running KVM/QEMU.

Key job responsibilities

• Own the Graviton bare-metal virtualization layer — KVM/QEMU VM management, subsystem start/stop, health monitoring, and fault recovery.
• Develop embedded software in Rust, C, C++, or other modern languages for the virtualization and emulation layer.
• Write device drivers and system applications for the various satellite systems running on virtual hardware.
• Write software to interact with micro-controllers and emulated hardware peripherals (FPGA, HSM, sensors).
• Build and maintain the custom AMI pipeline that pre-configures all satellite dependencies, reducing provisioning time and preventing dependency drift.
• Develop and optimize provisioning scripts that deploy satellite software (LEP images, firmware, certificates) onto emulated LRUs via SSM.
• Implement plugin framework extensions for new LRU types (satellites, GGMAs, GTMAs, customer terminals) on the Graviton host.
• Build network virtualization between VMs — WireGuard tunnels, inter-entity networking, and TT&C link emulation.
• Optimize boot-time and provisioning latency for QEMU-based satellite instances.
• Debug and resolve issues at the intersection of host OS (Ubuntu/ARM64), guest OS (LEP/Yocto), and QEMU emulation.
• Develop fidelity improvements — HSM crypto emulation, EFUSE emulation, CAN bus simulation, and error injection frameworks.
• Work closely with other software and hardware teams to support board bring-up and integration testing.

Basic Qualifications

• 3+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
• Experience with Linux systems programming (C, Rust, Python, or Bash)
• Experience with virtualization or emulation (KVM, QEMU, Docker, or similar)
• Familiarity with embedded Linux (boot process, systemd, device drivers, or Yocto/Buildroot)
• Experience with shell scripting and system automation
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with ARM64 architecture or Graviton instances
• Experience with QEMU device emulation, QMP protocol, or custom QEMU plugins
• Experience writing device drivers or interacting with micro-controllers
• Experience with network virtualization (WireGuard, bridge networking, TAP/TUN interfaces)
• Familiarity with satellite systems, hardware test environments, or simulation platforms
• Experience with EC2 bare-metal instances and SSM for remote commanding
• Experience with AMI/image building pipelines (EC2 Image Builder, Packer)
• Familiarity with certificate provisioning, secure boot, or HSM interfaces
• Experience with Python packaging (pip, virtualenv) and container image management (ECR, Docker)
• Experience with Rust for systems programming

Pay

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location.

USA, WA, Redmond - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually