Software Development Manager, Leo Flight Software Team
About the role
We are looking for an Embedded Software Development Manager to lead the team building and scaling VirtSat — Leo's virtual satellite simulation platform. KSS 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. You will own the Graviton virtualization layer and lead the team responsible for VM lifecycle, LRU boot, subsystem provisioning, and software deployment for every virtual entity in the constellation. You'll work at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, embedded Linux, and satellite operations — leading the team that builds the platform every Leo satellite software release is tested on before launch.
Key job responsibilities
- Lead a team of embedded engineers building and operating the Graviton bare-metal virtualization layer (KVM/QEMU VM management, subsystem provisioning, health monitoring, and fault recovery)
- Partner with 10+ client teams across satellite, ground, networking, and security organizations to drive VirtSat adoption
- Drive platform reliability to 99.96% availability with optimized latency (target: <5 min VirtSat spin-up)
- Own the custom AMI pipeline, provisioning scripts, and plugin framework that deploy satellite software onto emulated LRUs
- Scale the platform to 4K+ concurrent virtual entities
- Hire, develop, and retain top embedded engineering talent
- Define technical roadmap for fidelity improvements (HSM crypto emulation, EFUSE emulation, CAN bus simulation, error injection frameworks)
- Reduce HITL dependency by expanding the scope of tests that run on VirtSat
Basic Qualifications
- 5+ years of people management, managing engineers experience
- Experience with embedded systems, Linux systems programming, or virtualization (KVM/QEMU)
- Experience building and operating distributed systems at scale (AWS services — EC2, ECS, Step Functions, DynamoDB)
- Experience with infrastructure-as-code (CDK, CloudFormation)
- Track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineering teams
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience managing teams that own both service infrastructure and embedded/guest-OS layers
- Experience with ARM64/Graviton bare-metal instances
- Experience with QEMU device emulation or custom QEMU plugins
- Experience with network virtualization (WireGuard, Transit Gateway, IPAM)
- Familiarity with satellite systems, HITL test environments, or simulation platforms
- Experience with embedded Linux (Yocto, systemd, device trees, boot processes)
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing (Hydra, Spock), and developer tooling
- Experience with Rust for systems programming
- Experience with certificate provisioning, secure boot, or HSM interfaces
Pay
USA, WA, Redmond - 184,900.00 - 250,200.00 USD annually
Benefits
- Health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription)
- Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans
- EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage
- 401(k) matching
- Paid time off
- Parental leave