Application Software Engineer (Staff / Senior Staff)

WORK LOCATION: Remote (Eastern time zone preferred)

FLSA STATUS: Exempt

SALARY RANGE: The anticipated salary range for this role is $130,000 to $200,000 annually. This range reflects a good faith estimate based on the targeted level for the role and typical compensation benchmarks across U.S. locations. Actual compensation may vary depending on the selected candidate’s qualifications, experience, geographical location, and internal alignment. 

SUMMARY

The Staff Application Software Engineer serves as a senior technical authority responsible for shaping the architecture, strategy and evolution of mission-critical operator software used across multiple UAS product lines. Engineers at this level define and enforce technical direction for application frameworks, mission system interfaces, visualization platforms and operator experience across the entire ground system ecosystem. 

This role requires deep domain expertise across complex system integration, UI/UX frameworks, real-time telemetry systems, distributed architectures and operator-centric workflows. In this role, you will mentor engineers, influence executive decision-making and lead cross-functional initiatives across autonomy, avionics, test and production. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

The following job functions are a basic requirement but are not limited to and may be assigned other duties: 

• Define enterprise-wide application software architecture, ensuring modularity, maintainability, and long-term scalability across multiple UAS platforms. 

• Lead cross-functional technical initiatives that span avionics, autonomy, test engineering, GNC, and operator experience teams. 

• Direct system design choices—including frameworks, interfaces, API standards, and data pipelines—for all operator-facing mission software. 

• Review, approve, and guide high-impact technical proposals, engineering change requests, and cross-program software integrations. 

• Lead resolution of complex system-wide issues that involve multiple subsystems, distributed data flows, safety considerations, or performance constraints. 

• Drive long-term roadmap planning with technical leadership, influencing feature prioritization, capability evolution, and architectural investments. 

• Serve as the top-tier escalation point for complex debugging, telemetry diagnostics, mission software failures, or flight-observed issues. 

• Mentor senior and staff engineers, strengthening technical judgment, architectural thinking, and leadership capability within the software team. 

• Represent software in customer meetings, major design reviews, executive briefings, and cross-site technical alignment forums. 

• Advocate for operator-centered design, ensuring mission effectiveness, reliability, and intuitive workflows remain core pillars of application development. 

• Contribute to enterprise standards for documentation, testing rigor, integration methodologies, and system validation. 

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

The following are a non-exhaustive list of qualifications for the position: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering or related field required. 

• 10–15 years of professional software engineering experience. 

• Proven track record as a technical leader for large-scale, multi-program software systems. 

• Experience defining architecture and long-term evolution of mission-critical applications. 

• Significant experience integrating with avionics, autonomy, GNC, or ground control systems. 

• Demonstrated abilit