Principal Software Engineer - Flight Test & Integration

We’re ALTEN Technology USA, an engineering company helping clients bring groundbreaking ideas to life—from advancing space exploration and life-saving medical devices to building autonomous electric vehicles. With 3,000 experts across North America, we partner with leading companies in aerospace, medical devices, robotics, automotive, commercial vehicles, EVs, rail, and more.

As part of the global ALTEN Group—57,000 engineers in 30 countries—we deliver across the entire product development cycle, from consulting to full project outsourcing.

When you join ALTEN Technology USA, you’ll collaborate on some of the world’s toughest engineering challenges, supported by mentorship, career growth opportunities, and comprehensive benefits. We take pride in fostering a culture where employees feel valued, supported, and inspired to grow.

As Principal Software Engineer - Flight Test & Integration you will be responsible for;

• Develop and execute FSW verifications tests using both proprietary satellite digital twin software and a Hardware in the Loop (HIL) FlatSat.
• Establish and document test methodologies and descriptions to test compliance with customer-based requirements.
• Develop and implement software and tools for ground support equipment to test and validate flight software.
• Contribute to document management, including versioning, bug reporting, and test plan documentation.
• Oversee and conduct official validation tests.
• Upgrade existing flight software for new missions
• Contribute to the development of new satellite flight software for 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 verification and validation tests at the unit, module, subsystem, and platform level
• Work with manufacturing engineers to support installation onto the hardware-in-the-loop test environments and eventual flight hardware
• Participate in anomaly resolution activities and patch existing 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

Qualifications;

Education:

• 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.

Experience:

• 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.

Knowledge, Skills, Demonstrated Capabilities:

• 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 and testing
  • Test scripting (TCL/Python)
  • Device driver development and testing of software/hardware interfaces
  • Real-time operating systems programming, debugging, and testing
  • Cybersecurity
  • GNC algorithms design, analysis, testing, and implementation
  • Functional validation of embedded software on hardware
  • Software safety assurance
  • Network topology and configuration
  • Simulators: numerical, emulator, and hardware in the loop
  • Software requirements and configuration management

Travel Required:

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

Eligibility:

• US Citizenship is required

Clearance:

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

Salary Range: $150K-$220K

The actual salary offered is dependent on various factors including, but not limited to, location, the candidate’s combination of job-related knowledge, qualifications, skills, education, training, and experience 

Note: Due to the nature of the work, only US Citizens need apply for this position.

Location: Can be fully remote. Preferred locations are Denver, CO, Arlington, VA, Merritt Island, FL, and Houston, TX

ALTEN Technology is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our Policy is to extend opportunities to qualified applicants and employees on an equal basis regardless of an individual’s age, race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or veteran status.

Please beware of job seeker scams and see this important notice on our careers page for more information about our recruiting process.

Compliance Notice: Alten USA is a federal contractor subject to the requirements of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) and Executive Order 11246. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

Drug Screening Requirement: As a federal contractor, Alten USA maintains a drug-free workplace. All candidates selected for employment will be required to successfully complete a pre-employment drug screening as a condition of hire.