Hourly Software Engineer Jobs in Reston, VA (NOW HIRING)

We are looking for an enthusiastic and creative 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.

The Software Engineer's primary responsibility will be contributing to the development and testing of our 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 Software Engineer will provide autonomous support of complex assignments, under the leadership of the Software Team Lead and Software Engineering Manager. The Software Engineer will have project and subject matter responsibility and authority.

Flight Software 45%

• Upgrade existing flight software for new missions.
• Contribute to the development of new satellite flight software for our 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 verification and validation tests at the unit, module, subsystem, and platform level.
• Work with manufacturing engineers to support installation onto the hardware-in-the-loop test environments and eventual flight hardware.
• Participate in anomaly resolution activities and patch existing flight software.
• Develop, integrate, and test flight software applications using spacecraft flight software frameworks such as NASA's Core Flight System (cFS).
• Contribute to the design, integration, and maintenance of reusable flight software components, messaging architectures, and command and telemetry interfaces.
• Support software integration activities across spacecraft subsystems, flight computers, payloads, and ground systems.

Software Integration and Test 45%

• 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 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.
• Develop and execute integration and verification testing of cFS-based flight software within simulation, FlatSat, and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) environments.
• Support end-to-end validation of command, telemetry, fault management, and autonomous spacecraft operations software.

Systems Modeling 5%

• Contribute to the development of systems- and mission-level modeling and simulation tools.
• Develop software models of payloads for ground testing.
• Support development of software model of satellite platform, particularly ensuring accurate representation of the flight software.

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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience developing spacecraft flight software (FSW) for satellites, spacecraft, launch vehicles, or autonomous aerospace systems.
• Experience with NASA Core Flight System (cFS) and/or other spacecraft flight software architectures.
• Experience with real-time operating systems such as RTEMS, VxWorks, Integrity, or embedded Linux.
• Familiarity with spacecraft command and telemetry systems, CCSDS protocols, fault management, and onboard autonomy.
• Experience with Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL), FlatSat, digital twin, or spacecraft integration and test environments.
• Experience supporting spacecraft mission operations, anomaly resolution, and on-orbit software maintenance.

Qualified Experience / Skills / Training:

Education:

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

Experience:

• A minimum of 3 years with a Bachelor's degree, or 1 year with a Master's degree.
• Proven track-record of working with aerospace hardware and/or 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 and testing.
• Device driver development and testing of software/hardware interfaces.
• Real-time operating systems programming, debugging, and testing.
• Cybersecurity.
• GNS 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.

Eligibility:

• US Citizenship.