Senior Software Engineer - Embedded & Flight Systems

Star Catcher; Jacksonville (FL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k) retirement plan

Life insurance

Paid parental leave

Job summary

Star Catcher is building space-to-space energy grid technology and is seeking a Senior Software Engineer - Embedded & Flight Systems in Jacksonville, FL. You will own flight software architecture across programs and drive end-to-end lifecycle from requirements through flight qualification.

You will lead design reviews, set FDIR strategies, and mentor embedded engineers while collaborating with hardware, FPGA, and systems teams in a fast-paced, early-stage environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 10+ years of professional experience developing embedded software for real-time hardware-centric systems.
• Proven track record delivering complex projects from architecture through deployment.

Responsibilities

• Lead flight software architecture across programs and co-own cross-domain interfaces with hardware, FPGA, and systems leads.
• Own full software lifecycle for flight software from requirements down to production and fielded support.
• Set FDIR strategy, watchdogs, redundancy, and health monitoring standards.
• Contribute to software standards, coding practices, and institutional knowledge as the team grows.
• Mentor embedded/flight software engineers and lead design reviews.
• Participate in requirements development, verification, validation, and design reviews for traceability.
• Maintain software quality through code review and unit/integration testing.

Skills

Embedded C/C++

RTOS / real-time scheduling

Flight software development

Hardware-software co-design

Git & Python

System architecture

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Computer/Electrical Engineering

Master's degree or Ph.D. in Computer Engineering/CS or related

Tools

RTEMS

FreeRTOS

VxWorks / Zephyr

SpaceVPX / VPX

JTAG / oscilloscopes

Docker

Job description

Power the future of Space at Star Catcher

Star Catcher is building the first energy grid in space to power the orbital economy.

Today's spacecraft must generate all of their own power, which caps what they can do and how long they can operate. But what if they could “plug” into a grid, the way buildings do on Earth? Instead of cables and outlets, Star Catcher is building the technology to wirelessly beam energy to spacecraft’s existing solar panels when and where they need it.

Be an early member of a team building an entirely new energy infrastructure at scale to power the next frontier.

Star Catcher Industries, Inc., located in Jacksonville, Florida, has an opportunity for a Senior Software Engineer - Embedded & Flight Systems to support the development of space-to-space power beaming spacecraft and the Star Catcher Network, its orbital power grid.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead flight software architecture across programs and co-own cross-domain system interfaces with hardware, FPGA, and systems leads.
• Own full software development lifecycle execution for flight software, including requirements flow-down and decomposition, allocation to design, hardware/software integration, design verification and qualification, transition to production, and fielded product support.
• Set Fault Detection, Isolation, and Recovery (FDIR) strategy, watchdog mechanisms, redundancy management, and health monitoring standards.
• Contribute to software development standards, coding practices, and institutional knowledge as the team grows.
• Mentor embedded/flight software engineers and lead design reviews.
• Participate in software requirements development, verification, validation, and design reviews to ensure complete traceability from requirements through flight qualification.
• Maintain software quality through code review and unit and integration testing

Basic Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Experience: 10+ years of professional experience developing embedded software for hardware-centric, real-time systems, with a proven track record of delivering complex projects from architecture through deployment.

Technical Expertise

• Expert proficiency in C and C++ for embedded systems, with a solid understanding of memory management, concurrency, interrupt handling, and real-time scheduling.
• Strong experience with software/hardware co-design, distributed systems design, and software/computer architecture.
• Experience developing software on ARM Cortex-M, ARM Cortex-A, RISC-V, or similar embedded processor architectures using Real-Time Operating Systems (e.g., RTEMS, FreeRTOS, VxWorks, LynxOS, INTEGRITY, Zephyr) or bare-metal environments.
• Familiarity with backplane-based embedded architectures (e.g., SpaceVPX, VPX, CompactPCI Serial) and integrating compute modules within a multi-board chassis system.
• Comfortable with hardware-software integration, using tools such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, JTAG debuggers, and protocol analyzers to diagnose complex interactions.
• Working knowledge of Bash/Python for build, test, and release automation, along with configuration/change management and debug/trace analysis tools.
• Working knowledge of Git and collaborative software development workflows
• Enjoy operating in a fast-paced, early-stage environment and solving ambiguous engineering challenges with an analytical approach. Willing to own systems from initial concept through flight operations.

Desired Skills

• Experience developing software that has flown in space, or familiarity with radiation-mitigation strategies in software (e.g., memory scrubbing, checkpointing, ECC memory, redundancy schemes, watchdog timers).
• Experience developing software on Embedded Linux platforms is a plus.
• Experience collaborating with FPGA engineers or developing software for heterogeneous FPGA/SoC or system-on-chip architectures.
• Familiarity with safety-critical or mission-assurance software practices (e.g., MISRA C/C++, DO-178C or equivalent assurance frameworks, NASA NPR 7150.2) and common flight architectures such as NASA cFE/cFS.
• Experience with embedded security and encryption for command and telemetry data protection.
• Experience developing or integrating with board support packages (BSPs) and device drivers.
• Experience with Precision Time Protocol (PTPv2) or similar protocols for time synchronization across distributed avionics.
• Experience with continuous integration, automated test infrastructure, and containerized development environments (e.g., Docker), including DevSecOps and test automation using Python or similar languages.
• Familiarity with structured workflow tools supporting requirements management, configuration management, and change control.
• Master's degree or Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.

• Help us deploy and scale space infrastructure that will drive our utilization of space forward! We offer a highly competitive benefits package including access to comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement plan, life insurance, and paid parental leave, in addition to other benefits.

Star Catcher is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Star Catcher is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

All offers of employment at Star Catcher are contingent upon results of a thorough background check and your ability to provide proof of eligibility to work in the US.

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.