Principal Software Project Engineer

Please Note: To conform with the United States Government Space Technology Export Regulations, the applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., conditional resident, asylee or refugee (protected individuals as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

At Cesium Astro
, we are developers and pioneers of out‑of‑the‑box communication systems for satellites, UAVs, launch vehicles, and other space and airborne platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and cross‑functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands‑on, interactive, and autonomous work, Cesium Astro is the place for you. We are actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward‑thinking individuals to join our team.

We are looking to add a Principal Software Project Engineer I to our Internal Missions team. If you enjoy working in a startup environment and are passionate about developing software for satellites, spacecraft, and aerospace systems, we would like to hear from you.

The Cesium Astro software team designs complex firmware and software for state‑of‑the‑art aerospace systems. As a member of the software engineering team, you will help facilitate and improve the execution of the software development lifecycle  will collaborate with software engineers, program managers, customers, and other stakeholders to plan and manage execution in a fast‑paced engineering environment.

Activities include maintaining backlog health, holding software stand‑ups, and communicating project status to diverse stakeholders. The ideal candidate has experience managing embedded system firmware development in high‑reliability systems. Experience with both agile and traditional design methodologies is desirable, including agile and V‑model flows. Further, the ideal candidate has some first‑hand embedded system software development experience.

Your work will have a direct impact on the success of the company. You will work closely with the engineering team and program management to ensure the successful build and launch of our satellite. Element will be the largest, most powerful rideshare satellite in LEO. We’re launching eight of them in the next four years, starting with our first launch this year.

Together, our small team will design, build, and iterate to reduce mass and cost while increasing performance, reliability, and manufacturability of a new generation of satellites. Let’s build!

• Create software development plans subject to cost and schedule constraints.
• Communicate project status to a wide variety of technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Represent the software engineering team to programmatic stakeholders.
• Prioritize feature development based on varied and sometimes conflicting stakeholder inputs.
• Lead periodic planning meetings, retrospectives, and daily stand‑ups.
• Maintain software issue tracking systems and projects such as Jira.
• Ensure consistent and correct software development lifecycle execution.
• Continuously improve software project execution processes.

• Bachelor of Science (BS) or Master of Science (MS) degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or Computer Engineering.
• A minimum of 9 years of experience required including at least 1 year of embedded software development experience and at least 3 years of software project management experience.
• Excellent communication skills, especially in tailoring to a target audience.
• Familiarity with hardware design processes as they pertain to software development.
• Knowledgeable on multiple software product lifecycle and management approaches including Agile and V‑model.
• Competency with software lifecycle management tools such as issue tracking (Jira preferred), requirements management, configuration management, etc.

• Excellent communication skills, especially in tailoring to a target audience.
• Familiarity with board‑level hardware design processes as they pertain to software development.
• Knowledgeable on multiple…