Lead Flight Software Engineer (Founding Engineer)

Lead Flight Software Engineer (Founding Engineer)Boulder, COOur client are a new exciting Space startup looking for a Flight Software Lead to take ownership of thier flight software stack from the ground up, enabling autonomous drone flight, proximity ops, formation flying, and docking.This will be a Founding-level role: You will be a core technical leader in the business, with meaningful equity and involvement in technical decisions, customer engagement, and building the team.From a technical perspective this is not a role where you’ll inherit or maintain a flight software stack, you’ll architect it, and everything their drones do in orbit will run on it.What You’ll Own:Build the flight software platform and team that will fly thousands of autonomous space drones across commercial inspection and defense programsArchitect the FSW stack end-to-end including framework, command and telemetry, boot and mode sequencing, and device driversSelect flight computers and design the drone compute and avionics architectureWrite drivers for various drone subsystemsDesign, develop, and validate drone flight, ground, and sim softwareDeliver flight-proven software by owning the on-orbit heritage payloadThe avionics and autonomy stack that flies as a hosted payload and returns real orbital data before their first vehicleHelp build a comprehensive but lean EDU, including an expansive “air-floor” for rapid flight iteration and validationBuild the CI/CD, hardware-in-the-loop test benches, and sim environments that allows them to rapidly iterate and validateQualify COTS avionics in-houseLead software readiness and own the go/no-go for FSW deploymentRecruit and mentor the leading autonomous flight software team for precision inspection, RPOD, and formation flyingHelp build the company as a technical co-founder, supporting across all decisions, customer engagements, hiring, and program reviewsExperience Required:Significant experience owning or leading flight software for spacecraftDeep embedded backgroundHands-on experience with FDIR and/or safety-critical systemsComfortable and excited about building architectures and systems from the ground upIf you’ve owned flight software, know what it takes to make an autonomous vehicle safe-able in orbit, and want the responsibility that comes with being an early technical leader building something new in space, we’d love to hear from you.