Principal Software Engineer

This position offers FULLY REMOTE opportunities for candidates across the United States. Preferred work locations:
Arlington VA, Denver CO, Houston, TX or Merritt Island, FL.

Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Inc offers advanced solutions to meet the most complex U.S. defense, security, space, and intelligence requirements. Celebrating over 50 years in the US, we remain a trusted government partner, leveraging world-class satellite, laser communication, rotor and fixed wing solutions to help our national security, defense and space focused customers meet their missions.

Airbus U.S. looks to employ a commitment driven team, dedicated to enabling our customer's mission success. We are committed to maintaining a diverse and inclusive work environment and a welcoming and engaging staff. With competitive compensation and superior employee benefits, as well as a commitment to fostering individual career growth, Airbus U.S. is the place where top talent wants to work.

Airbus U.S. Space & Defense is looking for an enthusiastic and creative software engineer to develop spacecraft flight software. We're looking for candidates who can bring exceptional embedded programming skills and strong experience in flight software to the team.

The Software Engineer's primary responsibility will be contributing to the development of Airbus U.S.'s satellite flight software. This engineer will be involved in the full lifecycle of flight software development, from requirements definition through operations. However, because we are a small team where each person takes on many roles, this engineer will also contribute to mission concept development, in-house modeling and simulation capabilities, and proposal writing.

Being at the cutting edge of space technology, we need someone who is eager to learn, grow, and take on new and potentially unfamiliar challenges. There is no shortage of fascinating problems to solve.

The Principal Software Engineer (Contractor) will lead and perform moderate and complex assignments, including providing guidance to junior Software Engineers. The Principal Software Engineer will have project and subject matter responsibility and authority.

• Upgrade existing flight software for new missions
• Contribute to the development of new satellite flight software for Airbus U.S. satellite platforms
• Develop in-house tools to analyze flight software performance and assess its compatibility with new mission and conops
• Develop and execute flight software tests at the unit, module, subsystem, and platform level
• Work with manufacturing engineers to support installation onto the hardware-in-the-loop test environment and eventual flight hardware
• Participate in anomaly resolution activities and patch existing flight software

• Contribute to the development of systems- and mission-level modeling and simulation tools
• Develop software models of payloads for ground testing
• Support development of software model of satellite platform, particularly ensuring accurate representation of the flight software

• Support working groups, both internal and with customers and/or vendors
• Support proposal writing, new business
• Assess the software impacts of new hardware, conops, and missions

• Bachelor's degree in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.
• Preferred:
  Master's in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.

• A minimum of 15 years with a Bachelor's degree, or 12 years with a Master's degree
• Proven track‑record of working with space hardware and/or flight software systems, starting from conceptual designs and tradeoffs through detailed design, development, manufacture, integration, test, deployment, and operations.

• Insatiable curiosity and a demonstrated ability to learn and work independently
• Proficiency in C/C++
• Expertise in one or more of the following:
• Embedded software development (ARM 7 preferred)
• BSP development
• Device driver development and software/hardware interfaces (Ethernet/CAN/Space Wire RMAP/1553/RS-422 preferred)
• New board bring up
• Real‑time operating systems programming, debugging, and testing (RTEMS and/or Peta Linux preferred)
• Cybersecurity for Space Systems
• GNC algorithms design, analysis, testing, and implementation
• Functional validation of embedded software on HITL and/or SITL test beds
• Software safety assurance
• Network topology and configuration
• Simulators: numerical, emulator, and hardware in the loop
• Software requirements and configuration management

• Periodic travel (less than 20%) to Airbus U.S. facilities or partner companies
• Occasional International travel to collaborate with European Airbus counterparts

• US Citizenship is required

• Ability to obtain and maintain a Government security clearance
• Active DoD security clearance at Secret or above…