Staff Software Engineer, Flight Software

Muonspace; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 234,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401k retirement plan

Three weeks paid vacation

Paid parental leave

Job summary

Muonspace in San Jose, CA is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the design, development, and testing of flight software for orbiting satellites. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in embedded systems and robust programming skills.

This full-time position offers a competitive salary, equity compensation, and comprehensive benefits, including health insurance and generous vacation policies.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience as a software engineer in a team environment.
• Experience in architecting and building embedded devices.
• Ability to read and understand hardware data sheets.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, integration, and testing of flight software.
• Define metrics aligned with company goals.
• Mentor senior engineers.

Skills

C/C++ programming

Embedded systems fundamentals

Excellent communication skills

Education

B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in computer science or related field

Tools

Linux-based development environment

Job description

About the role

Muon seeks a Staff Software Engineer to join our flight software team. The ideal candidate is an expert software developer with significant previous experience architecting and building robust bare‑metal / RTOS embedded devices or appliances. In this role, you will both set architectural direction for, and lead design, development, integration, and testing of much of the software and firmware that runs on our orbiting satellites. This position is based at our San Jose, CA office.

Responsibilities

• Leading member of the team defining and building Muon’s satellite bus platform
• Define and architect design and execution against the basic concepts and requirements of our missions to get the right software and firmware on orbit
• Design, bring up, and support the embedded software environment that runs in our satellite flight systems and peripherals using ARM Cortex‑M CPUs.
• Guide evaluation and selection of technologies for our software foundation
• Write application, platform, and driver functionality in our flight software environment and set the standards for how others use it
• Build the architectural patterns, shared libraries, services and technical strategy documents that enable high‑quality and high‑velocity development of flight software
• Integrate compute and peripheral subsystems in both software and hardware
• Collaborate with hardware team members on the design and bring up of Muon hardware
• Align team roadmaps with product requirements and mission needs
• Define metrics aligned with critical company goals and enable the team to achieve aggressive goals
• Ensure effective software and hardware‑in‑the‑loop test strategies
• Mentor senior engineers

Qualifications

• B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in computer science, electrical engineering, or related field
• 10+ years experience as a software engineer in a team environment
• Strong C/C++ programming, with practical familiarity of other languages
• Great embedded systems fundamentals: distributed system architecture, resource‑efficient design, low‑level drivers, bit manipulation, responsive software and IRQ handling, RTOS frameworks, I/O and communication buses.
• Integration and control of external hardware devices
• Read and understand hardware data sheets
• Excellent communication and presentation skills

Nice‑to‑have Skills

• Experience working in flight software or some closely related domain
• Rust and Python experience
• Knowledge of industry‑standard data formats and schemas (ProtoBuf, YAML, JSON, etc)
• Familiarity with a Linux‑based development environment
• Experience with one or more of: embedded linux, FPGA, HW design, RF communication systems, cloud/server infrastructure, network architecture.
• End‑to‑end development from product concept to delivery to customer/market.

Salary

The salary range for this role is $210,000 - $234,000, plus a competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location as assessed during the interview process.

Benefits

Full‑time employees receive equity compensation as well as benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401k retirement plan, short & long term disability and life insurance. We also offer three weeks paid vacation for new employees, along with 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time and paid parental leave.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

We believe in equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, age, national origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or gender identity. We value diversity in the workplace, and that starts with our applicants. We encourage you to apply, even if you don't check all the boxes, and we look forward to reviewing your application! In addition, if you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.

ITAR/EAR Requirements

This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. The Company may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.