Flight Software Lead Engineer – Hypersonic Programs

Job Description

Verity was founded with a focus on providing advanced science and technology and business management services to commercial and government clients. Our team comprises engineers and analysts with subject matter expertise in various domains, including software development, simulation technologies, experimentation support tools, and systems analysis methodologies. Additionally, we have applied our expertise in evaluating, analyzing, and simulating emerging threats. These capabilities have been successfully applied to not only Science and Technology (S&T) programs, but also major weapon system acquisition programs and gap-filling warfighter solutions.

We are seeking a Flight Software Lead Engineer to lead the development, integration, and test of flight software for Verity's hypersonic vehicle programs. This position provides an opportunity to take technical ownership of flight-critical software supporting advanced weapon systems from early development through ground testing and flight demonstration.

Position Overview

You'll serve as the technical lead for flight software development on one or more hypersonic vehicle programs. You will be responsible for defining the flight software architecture, establishing development and verification approaches, leading software implementation and integration, and ensuring successful integration with avionics, guidance, navigation and control (GNC), and other vehicle subsystems.

This is a hands-on technical leadership position. You'll be expected to contribute directly to software architecture, development, debugging, integration, and test while providing technical direction to other software engineers. You'll work closely with GNC, avionics, systems engineering, modeling and simulation, hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL), and test teams throughout the vehicle development lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, development, integration, and verification of embedded flight software for hypersonic vehicles and advanced weapon systems

• Serve as the technical lead for the flight software development team and provide technical direction, mentoring, and review of engineering work

• Develop real-time embedded software supporting vehicle guidance, navigation, control, mission management, communications, health monitoring, and avionics interfaces

• Translate system, vehicle, and subsystem requirements into flight software requirements and software architecture

• Define software interfaces with flight computers, sensors, navigation systems, actuators, communications systems, and other vehicle avionics

• Work closely with GNC engineers to integrate and implement guidance, navigation, and control algorithms within the flight software architecture

• Lead flight software integration with avionics hardware and support software-in-the-loop (SIL), hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL), and vehicle-level testing

• Develop and execute software verification strategies, test procedures, and automated test capabilities

• Troubleshoot complex software, hardware, timing, communications, and vehicle integration issues

• Support system requirements reviews, preliminary and critical design reviews, test readiness reviews, and flight readiness activities

• Support ground testing, flight test planning, flight operations, and post-flight data analysis

• Establish and maintain flight software development standards, coding practices, configuration management, and release processes

• Conduct code reviews and ensure software quality, traceability, maintainability, and configuration control throughout the development lifecycle

• Coordinate flight software development activities across internal engineering teams, subcontractors, suppliers, and Government customers as required

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical field from an accredited college or university

• Minimum of 7 years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience developing embedded or real-time software

• Demonstrated experience developing software for flight vehicles, missiles, spacecraft, unmanned systems, or other safety- or mission-critical embedded systems

• Strong proficiency in C and/or C

• Experience developing software for real-time embedded computing environments

• Experience interfacing software with sensors, actuators, communications devices, and other avionics hardware

• Understanding of embedded software architectures, real-time scheduling, timing constraints, communications protocols, and hardware/software interfaces

• Experience with software integration, debugging, verification, and hardware-in-the-loop testing

• Experience with version control and software configuration management using Git/GitLab or similar tools

• Ability to lead technical activities while remaining actively involved in software development and integration

• Strong technical communication skills and ability to work effectively across multidisciplinary engineering teams

• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing flight software for hypersonic vehicles, missiles, launch vehicles, spacecraft, or other high-performance flight systems

• Experience integrating GNC algorithms into real-time flight software

• Familiarity with flight computers, inertial navigation systems, GPS/GNSS receivers, actuators, telemetry systems, and vehicle communications interfaces

• Experience with real-time operating systems such as VxWorks, RTEMS, FreeRTOS, or similar environments

• Experience with embedded Linux or bare-metal embedded software development

• Experience with common avionics interfaces and protocols such as Ethernet, CAN, RS-422/485, SPI, I2C, or similar interfaces

• Experience with software-in-the-loop, processor-in-the-loop, and hardware-in-the-loop test environments

• Familiarity with Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), digital engineering, and requirements management tools

• Familiarity with DoD weapon system software development, airworthiness, safety, cybersecurity, or software assurance processes

• Experience supporting flight test activities and troubleshooting flight hardware and software in laboratory or field environments

• Active U.S. Government security clearance