Senior Avionics Embedded Firmware Engineer

Sophia Space Inc.; Pasadena, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Sophia Space Inc. is seeking a Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer to develop and integrate flight-critical software for avionics and the Tile platform. You will lead hands-on firmware from hardware bring-up through flight-ready operation, working with Jetson-based compute nodes and lower-level drivers.

The role demands deep experience with bootloaders, BSPs, HALs, and hardware schematics, in a startup environment and in-person in Pasadena, CA with some hybrid flexibility.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of hands-on embedded firmware development experience in aerospace, robotics, or other safety- or mission-critical environments.
• Expert-level proficiency in C/C++ for embedded systems.
• Strong experience with ARM Cortex-M (M4/M5/M7 or similar) architectures.
• Proven experience developing bootloaders, BSPs, HALs, and hardware-facing device drivers.
• Demonstrated ability to bring up new hardware from schematics to working firmware.
• Strong understanding of power sequencing, resets, watchdogs, interrupts, DMA, and linker scripts.
• Hands-on debugging experience with JTAG/SWD, oscilloscopes, and logic analyzers.
• Experience working with embedded Linux systems (Jetson or similar platforms).
• Ability to operate independently and take full ownership in a startup environment.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement bootloaders, BSPs, HALs, and low-level device drivers tightly coupled to custom avionics hardware.
• Bring up new ARM-based flight boards from first power-on through stable firmware operation, working directly from schematics and hardware documentation.
• Build firmware using bare-metal and/or RTOS architectures with deterministic timing and fault tolerance.
• Develop low-level flight firmware as part of system fault tolerance to, including command and telemetry handling, health monitoring, FDIR, safe-mode behavior, and autonomous recovery.
• Customize and integrate Jetson Linux platforms, including boot chain, device tree, kernel bring-up, and MCU to Jetson interfaces.
• Debug and resolve hardware–software integration issues, collaborating closely with avionics and systems engineers through test and flight readiness.
• Implement and validate power sequencing, reset handling, watchdogs, interrupt handling, DMA, and linker configurations.
• Collaborate closely with avionics hardware, systems, and mission teams through integration testing, protoflight activities, and flight readiness reviews.
• Develop and maintain MCU-side firmware supporting power, thermal, communications, and telemetry functions.
• Support and evolve redundant communication paths (e.g., dual CAN) for coordination, monitoring, and fault tolerance.

Skills

Embedded firmware

C/C++

ARM Cortex-M

Bootloaders/BSPs/HALs

Hardware bring-up

Jetson Linux

JTAG/SWD debugging

RTOS/Bare-metal

Tools

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Job description

Sophia Space Inc. is seeking a Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer to develop and integrate flight-critical software for avionics and the Tile platform. You will lead hands-on firmware from hardware bring-up through flight-ready operation, working with Jetson-based compute nodes and lower-level drivers.

The role demands deep experience with bootloaders, BSPs, HALs, and hardware schematics, in a startup environment and in-person in Pasadena, CA with some hybrid flexibility.