Principal FSW Engineer
AST SpaceMobile3 months ago
Responsibilities
- Lead the design, development, and deployment of embedded Linux flight software, including BSP bring-up, device drivers, and system-level integration.
- Own the networking subsystem architecture, including protocol stacks, network drivers, and link-layer communication.
- Collaborate with hardware, RF, and systems engineering teams to define interfaces and integrate networking subsystems with spacecraft hardware.
- Define and enforce software architecture, coding, and code-review standards across the Flight Software Team.
- Mentor junior and mid-level engineers and contribute to engineering best practices.
- Support Software-in-the-Loop simulation environments that model flight networking behavior.
- Participate in integration and testing while diagnosing complex hardware/software issues.
- Lead technical projects end to end, including scoping, planning, staffing, and delivery.
- Own build and CI infrastructure, release and configuration management, and software development lifecycle standards.
- Serve as the Flight Software technical point of contact for engineering teams and program leadership.
Requirements
- At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience with significant embedded Linux experience.
- Deep expertise in Linux kernel internals, including network and platform drivers, device trees, kernel configuration, and builds.
- Strong understanding of TCP/IP, UDP, routing, network interfaces, and socket programming.
- Experience implementing or integrating custom application-, transport-, or link-layer communication protocols.
- Proficiency in C, C++, the C++17 standard library, and Python for tooling and automation.
- Experience with embedded Linux build systems such as Yocto or Buildroot.
- Familiarity with cross-compilation toolchains and embedded debugging using JTAG, SWD, and GDB.
- Experience with real-time or latency-constrained Linux environments such as PREEMPT_RT and other RTOS platforms.
- Ability to debug across hardware/software boundaries using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and network analyzers.
- Experience with Git, unit testing, continuous integration, and Jira.
- Track record of leading projects involving larger systems, services, engineering infrastructure, or tooling beyond a single embedded target.
- Experience defining and improving engineering processes across multiple teams.
- Preferred experience includes RF or radio-frequency systems integration, embedded network security, TLS, secure boot, key management, CUDA, and high-reliability or fault-tolerant software design patterns.
- Strong written and verbal communication, technical discussion leadership, and stakeholder requirements-extraction skills.
- Ability to lift up to 25 pounds, work in office and lab environments, and travel occasionally for integration, testing, or collaboration.
About AST SpaceMobile
AST SpaceMobile builds a space-based cellular broadband network that connects directly to standard smartphones, selling capacity to mobile network operators and government users. The public company, founded in 2017 and headquartered in Midland, Texas, trades on NASDAQ. It has demonstrated direct 4G/5G voice and data links from its BlueWalker 3 test satellite and is developing commercial satellites to extend coverage to remote and underserved areas.