Spacecraft Engineer Intern (Flight Software)
Oligo SpaceBase Salary
$100k - $120k/yr
Responsibilities
- Assist with designing, implementing, testing, and deploying spacecraft flight software within NASA/JPL’s open-source F-prime framework.
- Write and debug embedded software interfacing directly with sensors, actuators, and radios over I2C, SPI, UART, and Ethernet.
- Help maintain and extend CMake build systems.
- Develop unit tests and support Hardware-in-the-Loop testing for spaceflight software.
- Assist with authoring Interface Control Documents and technical design notes.
- Collaborate with avionics and mission operations teams to troubleshoot hardware/software interactions.
- Optionally research, prototype, and integrate ML and AI algorithms into flight software for real-time, resource-efficient execution.
Requirements
- Currently pursuing a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related STEM field.
- Strong foundational knowledge of C++ in an embedded context, including pointers and memory management.
- Prior experience through internships or high-level student projects with bare-metal programming or a real-time operating system.
- Comfort working in an Ubuntu/Linux environment and using Git for version control.
- Ability to explain technical bugs and proposed fixes clearly.
- Ability to lift and carry up to 40 pounds for moving test rigs and hardware benches.
- Preferred familiarity with the F-prime framework or similar component-based architectures.
- Preferred understanding of the OSI model and basic networking protocols.
- Preferred experience with GTest, PyTest, or CI/CD pipelines.
- Preferred familiarity with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, or multimeters.
- Preferred interest in or exposure to deploying machine learning models on edge devices.
Benefits
- Unlimited PTO
- Catering provided on-site every day
- On-site work in Hawthorne, California
About Oligo Space
Oligo is a hardware, software, and AI research company building the automated engineering and production systems required to translate an objective directly into the physical system built to accomplish it in space. We begin with application-specific spacecraft, each designed and built around the precise payloads, instruments, mission objectives, and operating conditions it must support. As these systems advance, we will apply our technology beyond conventional spacecraft to engineer unique platforms, surface machinery, and the broader physical infrastructure humanity will need beyond Earth. We are now filling the manifest for a larger ~300 kg mission planned for the end of 2027. Alongside these missions, we are working with a small number of companies to define new space-based applications and determine the physical systems required to make them operational.