Senior Flight Software Lead for Real-Time Spacecraft

NewOrbit Space; Reading; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity option

Hybrid work

Visa sponsorship

Job summary

NewOrbit Space is engineering the next generation of space-based connectivity, with satellites designed to operate at very low Earth orbit. We seek a lead for the on-board flight software who can drive real-time C/C++/Rust on RTOS or Embedded Linux, and guide end-to-end development from simulation to on-orbit operations.

You will build robust, fault-tolerant software with strong observability and OTA update capabilities, while collaborating across avionics, AOCS, and mission teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years’ experience in development of flight software for spacecraft.
• Proven experience in building production embedded or real-time systems in C/C++ and/or Rust on RTOS or Embedded Linux for space systems.
• Strong grasp of real-time software: scheduling, interrupts, concurrency primitives, determinism.
• Proven ability to build reliable, testable systems: unit/integration testing, simulation-first development, HIL validation.
• Hands-on experience integrating with hardware via common interfaces (I2C, SPI, UART, CAN, etc.).
• Solid software engineering fundamentals: architecture, code review, CI/CD, observability/logging.
• Ability to own systems end-to-end from requirements to operations.

Responsibilities

• Lead the flight software engineering team - recruit, coach, and direct engineers to deliver the flight software for 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.
• Integrate subsystems end-to-end - define ICDs and build drivers/middleware over I2C/SPI/UART/CAN(-FD)/SpaceWire.
• Build spacecraft behaviors & autonomy - implement mode management, sequencing, and autonomous FDIR.
• Deliver reliable real-time performance - manage concurrency, timing, CPU/memory budgets, and observability.
• Build verification infrastructure - prototypes, SIL/HIL test harnesses, simulations, telemetry tooling.
• Ship code from review to orbit - CI/CD, support integration and launch ops, OTA updates.
• Work across disciplines - collaborate with avionics, AOCS, comms and mission teams to trade compute, power, etc.

Skills

Flight software leadership

C/C++

Rust

RTOS / Embedded Linux

Real-time systems

Subsystem integration

Tools

I2C

SPI

UART

CAN

SpaceWire

HIL/SIL test harness

Job description

NewOrbit Space is engineering the next generation of space-based connectivity, with satellites designed to operate at very low Earth orbit. We seek a lead for the on-board flight software who can drive real-time C/C++/Rust on RTOS or Embedded Linux, and guide end-to-end development from simulation to on-orbit operations.

You will build robust, fault-tolerant software with strong observability and OTA update capabilities, while collaborating across avionics, AOCS, and mission teams.