What are the responsibilities and job description for the Lead Flight Software Engineer position at Stealth Startup?
About the Company:
We are a stealth-mode Aerospace & Defense startup headquartered in El Segundo, CA. Our founding team hails from SpaceX, Anduril, and Lockheed Martin, and we are backed by Joint Staff-level military leadership and several Silicon Valley firms. With a world-class business development & leadership team already in place, we are well positioned to capitalize on already overwhelming demand.
Job Overview:
We’re seeking a Lead Flight Software Engineer to drive the architecture, development, and deployment of the embedded flight software stack for our first life saving system. You’ll be responsible for building a safe, secure, and performant flight software platform. As a founding engineering leader, you’ll shape not just the product, but the engineering culture, processes, and technical trajectory of the company.
Key Responsibilities:
- Architect and implement real-time embedded flight software for guidance, navigation, and control systems
- Own the full software lifecycle: requirements, architecture, implementation, verification, deployment, and field test
- Interface with hardware, GNC, autonomy, and test teams to integrate firmware and flight software into a mission-ready stack
- Lead code reviews, system simulations, and HITL testing
- Develop fault-tolerant architectures and hardware abstraction layers that support rapid iteration without compromising safety
- Guide build systems, CI/CD pipelines, and dev environments for embedded development
- Mentor junior engineers and help scale the software team
Basic Qualification:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or realted
- 8 years of experience writing real-time embedded software in
- C/C Experience leading development of flight software for aerospace, defense, or autonomous systems
- Strong understanding of RTOS concepts, state machines, sensor/actuator interfaces (SPI, I2C, UART, CAN), and control loops
- Experience debugging on real hardware using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and JTAG/SWD tools
Preferred Qualifications:
- Master’s degree or higher in a relevant engineering discipline
- Familiarity with GNC algorithms, simulation, and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HITL)
- Familiarity with Rust or Python for testing and tooling is a plus
- Experience with embedded Linux and NVIDIA Jetpack
- LinuxExperience with NixOS for reproducible image deploymentAp
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
