What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Flight Controller SW Engineer position at SiFly?
About the Role
SiFly is seeking a Senior Flight Software Engineer to help extend the autonomy, performance, and safety of our long-endurance UAV platform. This role is focused on hands-on development inside PX4 and our custom avionics stack, with direct ownership of flight-critical software, sensor and payload integration, and real-world validation through simulation, bench testing, and flight tests.
You will work across controls, embedded software, and system integration to deliver robust flight behavior on a production vehicle. This is a high-ownership role for someone who is comfortable moving between code, logs, hardware, and live aircraft, and who can make sound engineering decisions in a fast-moving development environment.
What You’ll Do
- Develop, modify, and improve flight-control behaviors, failsafes, mission logic, mode logic, and setpoint handling within PX4.
- Implement and extend PX4 modules, drivers, and middleware for sensors, payloads, and onboard peripherals.
- Work directly with PX4 communication and messaging layers including uORB and MAVLink.
- Integrate flight software with onboard computers, payload systems, and external avionics components.
- Own end-to-end integration and validation of new flight features across simulation, bench testing, and flight testing.
- Analyze flight logs and sensor data using Python and other tooling to verify behavior, tune performance, and diagnose edge cases.
- Participate directly in flight tests, including test preparation, data collection, debugging, and post-flight analysis.
- Work closely with avionics, hardware, autonomy, and payload teams to bring up and validate complete vehicle functionality.
- Help improve development workflows, configuration management, test infrastructure, and diagnostic tooling for deployment and field operations.
- Contribute to technical direction and engineering discussions around flight architecture, safety, and system-level tradeoffs.
What We’re Looking For
- Minimum 5 years of professional experience in flight software, robotics, aerospace, or embedded systems development.
- Strong hands-on PX4 development experience is required.
- Strong experience with MAVLink is required.
- Practical experience working with PX4 internals, including uORB.
- Strong C skills and solid Python proficiency for tooling, analysis, and debugging.
- Experience working on real robotic, aerospace, or embedded systems where software interacts closely with hardware.
- Strong understanding of flight controls, vehicle dynamics, estimation, or related disciplines.
- Ability to debug across software, hardware, and system boundaries using logs, instrumentation, and real test data.
- Experience integrating sensors and peripherals over interfaces such as CAN, UART, SPI, and I2C.
- Comfortable owning problems independently and driving them through validation in the lab and in flight.
- Clear communicator who can explain decisions, tradeoffs, and technical risks to a broader team.
- Strong work ethic and a high level of ownership in fast-paced development environments.
- Ability to participate in flight testing and collect your own data when needed.
Nice to Have
- Experience with uXRCE-DDS, UAVCAN, or related communication stacks.
- Background in nonlinear control, filtering, trajectory generation, or estimator development.
- Experience with hardware-in-the-loop simulation, automated test pipelines, or SIL/HIL workflows.
- Familiarity with radar, perception sensors, or detect-and-avoid related systems.
- RF or telemetry experience.
- Part 107 certificate or practical flight-test experience.
Details
- Contract to hire
- Availability: 30–40 hr/wk
- Location: Santa Clara , California