Staff Flight Software Engineer

About the role

The role is a Staff Flight Software Engineer position within Capella Space, now part of IonQ's space business. You will be responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining flight software for a growing satellite constellation. Your work will involve collaborating with EE, FPGA, and ground software engineers to ensure seamless integration between hardware and software. You will lead code reviews and mentor teammates with constructive, high-standard feedback. You will also write and maintain unit and integration tests to ensure robustness and reliability of the software, develop software documentation, and troubleshoot and resolve software issues quickly, including in live on-orbit operations. You will participate in the software development life cycle, from requirement analysis to deployment, and support integration and operations teams with software-related queries.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain flight software for a growing satellite constellation.
• Collaborate with EE, FPGA, and ground software engineers to ensure seamless integration between hardware and software.
• Lead code reviews and mentor teammates with constructive, high-standard feedback.
• Write and maintain unit and integration tests to ensure robustness and reliability of the software.
• Develop software documentation and provide cross-training to other team members.
• Troubleshoot and resolve software issues quickly, including in live on-orbit operations.
• Participate in the software development life cycle, from requirement analysis to deployment.
• Support integration and operations teams with software-related queries.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, or a related field or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of relevant, hands-on engineering experience.
• Ability to support a design through all software lifecycles including initial schematic review and architectural tradeoffs, preliminary and detailed design, implementation, integration, and test.
• Experience working with real-time embedded systems - both hardware and software, including low-level drivers. Hands on experience developing, testing, and debugging hard real-time software (bare-metal or RTOS).
• Familiarity with embedded Linux, Linux kernel modules, and standard Linux tools.
• Strong knowledge of programming compiled (C, C++) and scripted (Python, shell script, etc.) languages.
• Experience writing software for microcontrollers and other embedded systems, e.g., Xilinx Zynq SoCs.
• Familiarity with software configuration management.
• Hand-on experience with lab equipment and electronics hardware, e.g., oscilloscopes, logic analyzers.

Required Qualification

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Capella Employees must be a U.S. citizen, lawful U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State and/or the U.S. Department of Commerce, as applicable. Learn more about ITAR here.