Lead Flight Software Engineer
NewOrbit Space10 months ago
Reading, United KingdomStaff+
Responsibilities
- Lead, recruit, coach, and direct a flight software engineering team delivering spacecraft software.
- Own the onboard flight-software stack, including real-time C/C++ software on RTOS or Embedded Linux.
- Integrate spacecraft subsystems through ICDs, drivers, middleware, and interfaces including I2C, SPI, UART, CAN-FD, and SpaceWire.
- Implement spacecraft mode management, sequencing, autonomy, and autonomous fault detection, isolation, and recovery.
- Manage real-time concurrency, timing, CPU and memory budgets, observability, and fault tolerance.
- Build prototypes, SIL/HIL test harnesses, simulations, and telemetry-analysis tooling.
- Support code delivery, integration, launch operations, and secure over-the-air updates.
- Collaborate with avionics, AOCS, communications, and mission teams across system resource budgets.
Requirements
- At least 5 years of spacecraft flight-software development experience, including experience leading engineers with flight-software deliverables.
- Experience building production embedded or real-time space systems in C/C++ and/or Rust on RTOS or Embedded Linux.
- Strong understanding of scheduling, interrupts, concurrency primitives, determinism, and constrained CPU and memory.
- Experience building reliable, testable systems using unit and integration testing, simulation-first development, HIL validation, and disciplined debugging.
- Hands-on hardware integration using interfaces such as I2C, SPI, UART, CAN-FD, and GPIO, with practical laboratory debugging experience.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals in architecture, code review, static analysis, configuration management, and observability/logging.
- Ability to own systems from requirements and design through implementation, verification, operations support, and improvement.
- Preferred experience with spacecraft flight-software frameworks such as cFS or F', or lightweight component-based equivalents.
- Preferred familiarity with radiation and SEU fault management, watchdogs, redundancy, safe-mode design, GNC/AOCS-adjacent systems, and control-loop integration.
- Preferred experience with digital twins, simulators, SIL/HIL validation, regression testing, commissioning, anomaly response, telemetry triage, and OTA update strategies.
Benefits
- Competitive salary and equity ownership stake.
- Private health insurance with dental and optical cover and annual health check-ups.
- Hybrid working with one dedicated remote day per week.
- Visa sponsorship and relocation support for candidates moving to join the company.
About NewOrbit Space
NewOrbit Space designs and builds spacecraft and electric propulsion to operate in ultra-low Earth orbit, where imaging is sharper and latency lower. It offers satellite platforms and tailored services for Earth observation and communications customers, aiming to reduce mission costs versus conventional LEO operations. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Reading, England, the company is privately held.