Senior Principal Software Engineer - Space Vision (Remote)

Firefly Aerospace; Cedar Park (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental and vision plans

Parental leave

Educational reimbursement

Short-term disability

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Firefly Aerospace is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the development of critical features across the software stack for spaceflight systems. You will build libraries, APIs, and tools connecting perception algorithms with cameras, compute hardware, simulation environments, flight software, and mission operations.

The role involves cross-disciplinary collaboration across software, hardware, and systems engineering, with opportunities to mentor engineers and influence architecture.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a technical field; 10+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Strong proficiency in modern C++, including multithreading, memory management, debugging and performance optimization
• Experience designing reusable libraries, APIs, platform services, or software abstractions used across engineering teams
• Experience developing and debugging software in Linux environments and integrating software with hardware, sensors, networking interfaces, or external systems
• Strong understanding of software architecture, algorithms, automated testing, and maintainable software design
• Demonstrated ability to resolve complex system-level issues and communicate across software, algorithm, hardware, and systems teams

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, integration and testing of features within the software stack
• Build reusable C++ and Python libraries, APIs, tools, and abstractions
• Define interfaces between algorithmic and platform components in a large codebase
• Develop and optimize multithreaded, low-latency software for constrained environments
• Integrate cameras, sensors, and computing platforms into end-to-end systems
• Develop software involving 3D geometry, transformations, visualization, simulation, or reconstruction
• Establish automated testing, build infrastructure, and developer workflows to improve reliability
• Collaborate with perception, GNC, avionics, flight software, and mission operations teams
• Support software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing and mission operations
• Diagnose complex system-level issues and mentor other engineers

Skills

C++ multithreading

Linux development

Software architecture

Performance optimization

APIs & libraries design

Embedded systems integration

Mentoring

Python tooling

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / Software Engineering / Computer Engineering / Aerospace Engineering / Robotics

Master’s or PhD preferred

Tools

Linux

Git

Python

Job description

Firefly Aerospace is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the development of critical features across the software stack for spaceflight systems. You will build libraries, APIs, and tools connecting perception algorithms with cameras, compute hardware, simulation environments, flight software, and mission operations.

The role involves cross-disciplinary collaboration across software, hardware, and systems engineering, with opportunities to mentor engineers and influence architecture.