Founding Lead, Avionics & Flight Software — Equity

Pillar Space; Los Angeles, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Dental & Vision

401(k)

Equity

PTO & Sick Time

Job summary

Pillar Space is seeking a Founding Lead Avionics & Software Engineer to own the avionics and flight software stack from first principles — the flight computers, electronics, buses, and software that command, control, and keep our spacecraft alive.

This senior technical leadership role requires defining architecture, setting standards, mentoring engineers, and building the team and processes required for flight-grade hardware and software.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 8+ years designing, building, testing, or flight-qualifying avionics, flight software, or embedded systems for spacecraft, launch vehicles, aircraft, robotics, or other high-reliability systems.
• Experience leading technical workstreams, managing engineers, mentoring junior and mid-level engineers, or building high-performing teams.
• Demonstrated ability to own complex hardware/software systems from early architecture through implementation, test, validation, and operational readiness.
• Strong fundamentals in embedded systems, real-time software, and digital electronics.
• Proficiency in embedded C and/or C++ and experience with at least one RTOS or bare-metal embedded development.
• Experience with avionics hardware: schematic capture, board-level design review, digital interfaces and buses, and hardware bring-up and debugging.
• Experience taking software and hardware beyond the bench into integration, hardware-in-the-loop, and testbeds.

Responsibilities

• Own the avionics and flight software architecture from design through flight.
• Lead design of flight electronics: flight computers, C&DH, sensor interfaces, and buses.
• Develop flight software: real-time embedded software, drivers, bootloaders, telemetry handling, and fault management.
• Architect fault detection, isolation, recovery, safe modes, and watchdogs for flight-grade systems.
• Define avionics interfaces and bus architectures (SpaceWire, CAN, Ethernet, MIL-STD-1553, SPI, I2C, UART, LVDS).
• Provide technical leadership across avionics, flight software, embedded, integration, and test efforts.
• Hire, mentor, and develop avionics/embedded/flight software engineers as the team grows.
• Establish engineering processes, code/design review standards, and verification discipline for flight hardware/software.
• Build test infrastructure: flatsats, HIL/PIL rigs, EGSE, automated test, and CI for flight software.
• Define requirements, interfaces, error budgets, verification plans, and fault-handling approaches for avionics subsystems.
• Select, integrate, and test avionics hardware with vendors and internal teams.
• Drive board bring-up, debugging, and root-cause resolution across hardware/software.
• Collaborate with GNC, power, propulsion, mechanical, systems, and mission operations to deliver an integrated system.
• Shape technical roadmap, culture, hiring plan, and long-term avionics/software strategy.
• Represent avionics and software in design reviews, customer conversations, diligence, and vendor discussions.

Skills

Embedded C/C++

Flight software

Avionics

RTOS

Hardware bring-up

Technical leadership

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelors in Electrical/Computer/Aerospace Engineering

Tools

Oscilloscope

Logic analyzer

HIL/PIL rigs

Verilog/VHDL

Job description

Pillar Space is seeking a Founding Lead Avionics & Software Engineer to own the avionics and flight software stack from first principles — the flight computers, electronics, buses, and software that command, control, and keep our spacecraft alive.

This senior technical leadership role requires defining architecture, setting standards, mentoring engineers, and building the team and processes required for flight-grade hardware and software.