Platform Engineer II: Embedded C++ for Spaceflight (Onsite)

Firefly Aerospace, Inc.; Cedar Park (TX); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision plans

Parental leave

Educational reimbursement

Short term disability

Flexible PTO

Employee stock ownership

Job summary

Firefly Aerospace, Inc. is seeking a Platform Engineer to lead the development of critical C++ platform software and firmware for onboard systems.

You will own core SDK components, interfaces, and tools, collaborating with hardware teams to integrate sensors and compute platforms for end-to-end operations. The role focuses on modern C++ within embedded Linux, with opportunities to expand into computer vision and spacecraft applications.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience developing complex production systems.
• Experience in embedded Linux environments and integrating software with hardware, sensors, and external systems.
• Proficiency in modern C++, including multithreading, memory management, debugging, and performance optimization.
• Experience writing general systems software: IPC mechanisms, hardware buses and sensor interfaces (GMSL, I2C, SPI), and network protocols (TCP/IP).
• Experience designing reusable libraries, APIs, platform services, or SDK components used across engineering teams.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, algorithms, automated testing, and maintainable software design.
• Ability to resolve complex system-level issues and communicate across software, algorithm, hardware, and systems engineering teams.
• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• Experience developing software or firmware for spacecraft, aerospace, robotics, autonomous vehicles, defense systems, or mission-critical applications.
• Experience integrating cameras or perception sensors with embedded Linux, GPUs, FPGAs, or other heterogeneous compute platforms.
• Familiarity with computer vision, visual navigation, state estimation, localization, mapping, or perception pipelines.
• Experience with 3D geometry, coordinate transformations, camera models, or spatial data structures.
• Proficiency in Python for tooling, automation, and testing.
• Experience with flight software interfaces, telemetry and commanding, software- or hardware-in-the-loop testing, vehicle integration, or mission operations

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, integrate, and test critical features within our onboard C++ software stack.
• Build and maintain core components of the Sol3 SDK, including reusable C++ libraries, APIs, tools, and abstractions used across engineering teams.
• Write general systems software involving inter-process communication (IPC), device and sensor interfaces (GMSL, I2C, SPI), and networking (TCP/IP, UDP, Spacelink, CCSDS).
• Develop and optimize multithreaded, low-latency software for compute-, memory-, and bandwidth-constrained embedded environments.
• Integrate cameras, sensors, heterogeneous compute platforms, and networking interfaces into reliable end-to-end systems.
• Partner with hardware teams to test user flows and implement SDK-ready solutions.
• Help integrate perception algorithms into Sol3 SDK core components and define interfaces between algorithmic and platform code.
• Develop onboard applications supporting perception, navigation, and mission operations.
• Support software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, spacecraft integration, mission simulation, and flight operations activities.
• Diagnose complex system-level issues spanning software, firmware, and hardware; contribute to architectural decisions and mentor engineers

Skills

Modern C++

Embedded Linux

Multithreading

Sensors integration

SDK development

Python

Education

Bachelor's degree in a related field

Master's degree

Tools

GMSL

I2C

SPI

APIs

Embedded Linux debugging tools

Job description

Firefly Aerospace, Inc. is seeking a Platform Engineer to lead the development of critical C++ platform software and firmware for onboard systems.

You will own core SDK components, interfaces, and tools, collaborating with hardware teams to integrate sensors and compute platforms for end-to-end operations. The role focuses on modern C++ within embedded Linux, with opportunities to expand into computer vision and spacecraft applications.