Principal Software Engineer (Contract)

This position offers FULLY REMOTE opportunities for candidates across the United States. Preferred locations: Arlington VA or Merritt Island, FL.

Position Summary:

The Software Engineer's primary responsibility will be contributing to the development 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, work with 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 lead and perform moderate and complex assignments, including providing guidance to junior Software Engineers. The Principal Software Engineer will have project and subject matter responsibility and authority.

Position Responsibilities:

Flight Software 80%

• Upgrade existing flight software for new missions
• Contribute to the development of new satellite flight software for Airbus U.S. satellite platforms
• Develop in-house tools to analyze flight software performance and assess its compatibility with new mission and conops
• Develop and execute flight software tests at the unit, module, subsystem, and platform level
• Work with manufacturing engineers to support installation onto the hardware-in-the-loop test environment, software simulation environment and eventual flight hardware
• Participate in anomaly resolution activities and patch existing flight software
• Support generation of software documentation including software requirements, software design, and software user manual documents

Software Integration and Test 15%

• Provide support to software integration and test team
• Support generation of test plans, test procedures, test scripts, test reports and compliance matrices in support of verification and validation efforts
• Help diagnose and correct software test failures

Additional Responsibilities 5%

• 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
• Other duties as assigned

Qualified Experience / Skills / Training:

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.
• Preferred: Master's 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:
  • Embedded software development (ARM 7 preferred)
  • BSP development
  • Device driver development and software/hardware interfaces (Ethernet/CAN/SpaceWire RMAP/1553/RS-422 preferred)
  • New board bring up
  • Real-time operating systems programming, debugging, and testing (RTEMS preferred)
  • Cybersecurity
  • GNC algorithms design, analysis, testing, and implementation
  • Functional validation of embedded software on hardware
  • Software safety assurance
  • Network topology and configuration
  • Simulators: numerical, emulator, and hardware in the loop
  • Software requirements and configuration management

Travel Required:
Periodic travel (less than 20%) to Airbus U.S. facilities or partner companies; occasional international travel to collaborate with European Airbus counterparts

Eligibility:
US Citizenship required

Clearance:
Ability to obtain and maintain a Government security clearance Active DoD security clearance at Secret or above is highly desirable

Physical Requirements:

• Vision: able to see and read computer screen and other electronic equipment with screens, able to read documents.
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