Staff Embedded Software Engineer

• BS/MS in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering and 5+ years of relevant experience
• Comfort implementing control loops in software and understanding enough digital communications to interface correctly with modem hardware, even if you're not designing the waveforms yourself
• Experience with Linux device driver development and real-time or embedded software design
• Strong systems programming skills in C, with experience writing software that talks directly to hardware - device drivers, register-level interfaces, or bus protocol implementations
• Solid network programming skills: sockets, packet handling, and layer 2/3 protocol implementation
• Experience with spacecraft communication subsystem software or radio interface development
• Familiarity with CCSDS packet structures and protocols
• Hands-on experience with serial and bus interfaces to radio hardware - SPI, I2C, UART, and Ethernet-based control planes
• Experience with thermal control loop implementation and tuning
• Knowledge of optical communication terminal operation concepts or free-space optical link systems
• Background in hardware abstraction layer design for systems with multiple hardware variants or evolving interfaces
• Comfort in a hardware lab: serial consoles, logic analyzers, and debugging signal integrity issues alongside the electronics team

• Health, dental, and vision coverage
• Additional stipend for employee wellness
• 401(k)
• Equity
• 11 company holidays & generous PTO
• Monthly lunches, game nights, holiday celebrations, and offsite events
• Generous parental leave and provide a $10,000 stipend for fertility, adoption, and other family-building benefits
• $2,000 annual learning stipend
• Constant training opportunities, company Lunch and Learns, and access to industry conferences

* The Interplanetary Sciences Program was established to expand access to scientific exploration across our solar system * Its mission is to make planetary research faster, more affordable, and more capable than ever before by rethinking how science missions are designed, built, and operated * The program aims to enable scientists to send instruments to distant worlds without decades of development or prohibitive costs * By creating a sustainable model for interplanetary exploration, we are transforming space science from an occasional event into a continuous process of discovery that accelerates knowledge, broadens participation, and inspires the next generation of explorers * Own the application-level software on the optical terminal processor - thermal control loops, fast steering mirror control interface, and health monitoring - writing the higher-level software that sits on top of FPGA gateware and interfaces to the payload network * Develop Linux device drivers and hardware abstraction layers for optical terminal components, including thermal sensors, actuators, and steering mirror interfaces, translating raw hardware behavior into clean software interfaces * Build the software interfaces between all communication subsystems (Ka-band, UHF, optical) and the rest of the data center, including packet parsers, protocol adapters, and OSI layer 2-3 implementations that connect externally developed radios to the payload network * Implement fault detection and recovery software for communication hardware, along with command, telemetry, and mode management software for each comms subsystem - because a bug in a packet parser or driver can mean a lost downlink pass and science data that sits on disk longer than planned * Work at the system boundary where software meets real hardware, debugging integration issues across serial buses, Ethernet interfaces, and radio transceivers alongside electrical engineers and the FPGA gateware developer