Software Integration Engineer

Merlin is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company developing autonomous flight systems for aircraft. This Staff Software Integration Engineer role focuses on building and maintaining the software connecting aircraft avionics, hardware-in-the-loop test environments, simulation models, and flight-test data systems that enable engineers to test aircraft systems before flight and investigate behavior through data capture and replay.

What You'll Do

• Own the architecture, development, and sustainment of real-time I/O software and telemetry infrastructure supporting aircraft integration benches and simulation environments
• Develop modern C++ software on embedded Linux targets to interface with avionics hardware, manage periodic execution and watchdogs, and integrate aircraft simulation models
• Develop and maintain hardware abstraction layers using UEI PowerDNA equipment, vendor SDKs, low-level I/O APIs, and device drivers; integrate ARINC 429, CAN, serial, and discrete I/O using aircraft interface control documents
• Develop and maintain asynchronous Rust services that ingest multiple telemetry sources, synchronize and order samples, and stream data to flight-test displays and recording systems using UDP, TCP, and ZeroMQ
• Build timestamp alignment, session recording, data retrieval, and simulation replay capabilities; maintain cross-compilation, packaging, and deployment workflows for ARM Linux targets using Yocto SDKs, CMake, Debian packages, systemd, Docker, and Docker Compose

What You Need

• Strong proficiency in modern C++ including resource management, concurrency, error handling, and maintainable systems software design
• Experience developing timing-sensitive software on Linux, including fixed-period execution, watchdogs, thread synchronization, and reliable startup and shutdown
• Deep familiarity with Linux host and embedded systems, including services, permissions, networking, software builds, deployment, and system-level diagnostics
• Experience integrating avionics or comparable hardware interfaces, including ARINC 429, and the ability to interpret and implement interface control documents
• Strong understanding of UDP/TCP networking and asynchronous data pipelines, including buffering, packet loss, ordering, back pressure, and connection management; proficiency in Python for engineering tools and test automation

Nice to Have

• Direct experience with UEI PowerDNA/PDNA SDKs or comparable data acquisition and avionics interface platforms from NI or Ballard
• Experience with async Rust using Tokio, channels, serde, and axum; familiarity with ARINC 429 labels, SDI/SSM fields, CAN messaging, MIL-STD-1553, and RS-232/RS-422 serial communications
• Experience with Curtiss-Wright IADS or similar flight-test telemetry and ground-station systems;
  Yocto SDKs, ARM targets, Debian packaging, systemd services, and Linux device-driver development
• Experience with Google Test, pytest, parser fuzzing, CI/CD pipelines such as Git Hub Actions with self-hosted runners, Docker-based deployment, S3 data storage, and REST APIs or JSON schema validation
• Aviation experience through professional work, flight simulation, or a pilot's license