Spaceflight Software Engineering Intern

Cowboy Space Corp.; San Carlos (CA); On-site; USD 77,000 - 86,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Daily lunch in the office and a fully–

stocked kitchen and beverages

Job summary

Cowboy Space Corp. in San Carlos, CA, invites motivated students to join a quarter-long internship designing and testing software across flight, embedded, and ground systems for an ambitious space-based energy program.

You will contribute to signal processing, on-orbit compute, and telemetry infrastructure while collaborating with hardware and systems engineers. ITAR compliance and hands-on hardware work are part of the role.

Qualifications

• Undergrad/grad student in CS/CE/EE or related STEM.
• Strong fundamentals in software engineering: data structures, algorithms, computer architecture.
• Proficient in C, C++, Python, or similar.
• Collaborative, self-directed, comfortable with ambiguity.

Responsibilities

• Design, development, and testing of software across flight, embedded, and ground systems, including avionics, guidance/navigation/control, and satellite bus/payload software
• Build and maintain software for signal processing, RF/optical communication pipelines, and on-orbit compute infrastructure (GPU/TPU clusters)
• Develop tooling and services for mission operations, telemetry/command infrastructure, and satellite health monitoring
• Write, test, and debug code across the stack — from low-level embedded/real-time systems to higher-level ground and data systems
• Collaborate with hardware, electrical, and systems engineering teams to define interfaces, debug integration issues, and validate end-to-end system behavior
• Build simulation, test, and hardware-in-the-loop frameworks to validate software against spacecraft requirements
• Participate in code reviews, write technical documentation, and contribute to engineering best practices as the team and codebase scale

Skills

Data structures

Algorithms

Computer architecture

C/C++/Python

Collaboration

Education

CS/CE/EE student

Tools

RTOS

VHDL/Verilog

F Prime

Job description

Cowboy Space Corp. in San Carlos, CA, invites motivated students to join a quarter-long internship designing and testing software across flight, embedded, and ground systems for an ambitious space-based energy program.

You will contribute to signal processing, on-orbit compute, and telemetry infrastructure while collaborating with hardware and systems engineers. ITAR compliance and hands-on hardware work are part of the role.