Principal Software Engineer (Contract)

This position offers fully remote opportunities for candidates across the United States. Preferred work locations: Arlington VA, Denver CO, Houston, TX or Merritt Island, FL.

Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Inc offers advanced solutions to meet the most complex U.S. defense, security, space, and intelligence requirements. Celebrating over 50 years in the US, we remain a trusted government partner, leveraging world-class satellite, laser communication, rotor and fixed wing solutions to help our national security, defense and space focused customers meet their missions.

Airbus U.S. looks to employ a commitment driven team, dedicated to enabling our customer's mission success. We are committed to maintaining a diverse and inclusive work environment and a welcoming and engaging staff. With competitive compensation and superior employee benefits, as well as a commitment to fostering individual career growth, Airbus U.S. is the place where top talent wants to work.

Position Summary:

Airbus U.S. is looking for an enthusiastic and creative principal software engineer to develop and test spacecraft flight software. We're looking for candidates who can bring exceptional programming skills and experience in embedded software development and testing to the team.

Position Responsibilities:

The Principal Software Engineer's primary responsibility will be contributing to the development and testing of Airbus U.S.'s satellite flight software. This engineer will be involved in the full lifecycle of flight software development, from requirements definition through operations. However, because we are a small team where each person takes on many roles, this engineer will also contribute to mission concept development, in-house modeling and simulation capabilities, and proposal writing. Being at the cutting edge of space technology, we need someone who is eager to learn, grow, and take on new and potentially unfamiliar challenges. There is no shortage of fascinating problems to solve.

The Principal Software Engineer will provide autonomous support of complex assignments, under the leadership of the Software Team Lead and Software Engineering Manager. The Principal Software Engineer will have project and subject matter responsibility and authority.

Flight Software - 60%

• Contribute to the development of new satellite flight software for Airbus U.S. satellite platforms.
• Support development and integration of GNC algorithms.
• Support development and modification of flight software hosted on new flight computer designs.
• Develop in-house tools to analyze flight software performance and assess its compatibility with new mission and conops.
• Develop and execute flight software verification and validation tests at the unit, module, subsystem, and platform level.

Software Integration and Test - 30%

• Develop and execute FSW verifications tests using both proprietary satellite digital twin software and a Hardware in the Loop (HIL) FlatSat.
• Establish and document test methodologies and descriptions to test compliance with Airbus and customer-based requirements.
• Develop and implement software and tools for ground support equipment to test and validate flight software.
• Contribute to document management, including versioning, bug reporting, and test plan documentation.
• Oversee and conduct official validation tests.

Additional Responsibilities - 10%

• Support working groups, both internal and with customers and/or vendors.
• Support proposal writing, new business.
• Assess the software impacts of new hardware, conops, and missions.

Qualified Experience / Skills / Training:

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.
• Preferred: Masters in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.

Experience:

• A minimum of 15 years with a bachelor's degree, or 12 years with a master's degree.
• Proven track-record of working with space hardware and/or flight software systems, starting from conceptual designs and tradeoffs through detailed design, development, manufacture, integration, test, deployment, and operations.

Knowledge, Skills, Demonstrated Capabilities:

• Insatiable curiosity and a demonstrated ability to learn and work independently.
• Proficiency in C/C++.
• Expertise in one or more of the following:
• GNC algorithms design, analysis, testing, and implementation.
• New device bring-up.
• BSP implementation.
• Embedded software development and testing.
• Cybersecurity.
• Device driver development and testing of software/hardware interfaces.
• Real-time operating systems programming, debugging, and testing.