Lead Flight Software Engineer - Spacecraft Autonomy & RTOS

NewOrbit Space; Reading; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

NewOrbit Space in the United Kingdom is seeking an experienced lead to own the software that makes the spacecraft behave. You will oversee real-time control, autonomy, mode management and how the flight software coordinates subsystems from simulation to on-orbit operations.

You will design robust flight software on RTOS or Embedded Linux, implement testing, integrate hardware interfaces (I2C, SPI, UART, CAN), and lead a team to deliver safe, reliable, and updatable spacecraft software.

Qualifications

• 5+ years’ experience in development of flight software for spacecraft.
• Proven experience building production embedded or real-time systems in C/C++ and/or Rust.
• Strong grasp of real-time software scheduling, interrupts, concurrency, and determinism.
• Proven ability to build reliable, testable systems with unit/integration testing and HIL validation.
• Hands-on experience integrating with hardware via I2C, SPI, UART, CAN and debugging.

Responsibilities

• Lead the flight software engineering team and deliver the flight software elements of a novel spacecraft to operate in VLEO.
• Own the on-board flight-software stack – design, implement and test real-time C/C++ on RTOS or Embedded Linux.
• Define ICDs and build drivers/middleware over I2C/SPI/UART/CAN(-FD)/SpaceWire as applicable.
• Build spacecraft behaviours & autonomy – mode management, sequencing and autonomous FDIR.
• Deliver reliable real-time performance – manage concurrency, timing, budgets and observability.
• Build verification infrastructure – SIL/HIL test harnesses, simulations and telemetry tooling.
• Ship code from review to orbit – CI/CD, integration & launch ops, OTA updates.

Skills

Flight software

Embedded RTOS

C/C++

Rust

Team leadership

CI/CD

Hardware integration

Diagnostics & debugging

Tools

I2C/SPI/UART/CAN

Job description

NewOrbit Space in the United Kingdom is seeking an experienced lead to own the software that makes the spacecraft behave. You will oversee real-time control, autonomy, mode management and how the flight software coordinates subsystems from simulation to on-orbit operations.

You will design robust flight software on RTOS or Embedded Linux, implement testing, integrate hardware interfaces (I2C, SPI, UART, CAN), and lead a team to deliver safe, reliable, and updatable spacecraft software.