Flight Control Software Engineer
Archer
LinuxPythonRTOSTCP/IP
Spacecraft Flight Computing Engineer
The Exploration Company
full-time
Posted on:
Origin: • 🇺🇸 United States • California
Visit company websiteJob Level
Mid-LevelSenior
Tech Stack
LinuxPythonRTOSSwitchingTCP/IP
About the role
- Design, implement, and maintain real-time embedded computing systems for spacecraft avionics.
- Apply fault-tolerant computing techniques to ensure reliable operation in the presence of radiation-induced upsets and anomalies.
- Develop and optimize our RTOS and Linux-based real-time operating environments, including kernel configuration, bootloader, device drivers, and system-level performance tuning.
- Perform hardware design tasks, including schematic capture, PCB layout, and component selection using Altium Designer, with emphasis on radiation-tolerant design practices.
- Develop, synthesize, and validate FPGA designs (VHDL/Verilog), incorporating mitigation strategies such as TMR, ECC, and scrubbing.
- Design, configure, and troubleshoot IP networking protocols, with focus on TSN for deterministic networking and PTP for precise time synchronization across spacecraft systems.
- Conduct system integration, hardware/software debugging, and fault injection testing to verify robustness under radiation and fault conditions.
- Collaborate closely with flight software, avionics, and systems engineering teams to define computing, networking, and interface requirements.
- Support mission operations through anomaly resolution and post-flight analysis of radiation-induced effects such as SEUs and TID.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
- Strong proficiency in C/C++ and Python for embedded software development and automation.
- Hands-on experience with real-time systems and Linux-based embedded computing.
- Practical expertise in fault-tolerant computing methods (redundancy, checkpoint/restart, graceful degradation).
- Knowledge of IP networking protocols (TCP/IP, UDP, routing, switching) with direct experience implementing TSN and PTP in real-time or mission-critical environments.
- Understanding of radiation effects on electronics and software, with experience implementing mitigation strategies at multiple system levels.
- Experience with system-level debugging tools and hardware/software integration.
- Strong skills in writing, debugging and performance tuning low-level software for Linux and/or a RTOS, including the bootloader and device drivers.
- Strong skills in hardware design using Altium Designer and/or Cadence Allegro for schematics and PCB layout.
- Experience with multi-gigabit SERDES interfaces like SGMII, PCI Express and Serial RapidIO (preferred).
- Solid background in FPGA development (VHDL/Verilog, synthesis, simulation, timing closure, hardware validation).
- Familiarity with modern multi-core ARM-based System-on-Chip hardware, including the internal architecture.
- Experience writing bare-metal code.
- Exposure to radiation testing (heavy-ion, proton, or TID) and analysis.
- Background in hardware-software co-design for reliability and fault-tolerance.
- Prior hands-on experience supporting space missions (preferred).
