Founding Flight Software Engineer

Founding Flight Software Engineer

-------------------------------------

Location

Torrance, CA (on-site only — no remote/hybrid)

Compensation

$160,000–$250,000 + equity + benefits

Industry

Aerospace / National Security Space

### About the Opportunity

Our client is an early-stage aerospace company designing resilient, high-performance spacecraft to safeguard critical orbital assets and ensure freedom of action in space. The company integrates advanced autonomy, sensing, and control into systems built for reliability, speed, and scale. Backed by seed funding and led by a founder with prior experience at a major space launch company and a successful aerospace startup, the company is preparing to fly its first spacecraft this year.

### The Role

We're seeking a Founding Flight Software Engineer to join the early engineering team and own the flight software stack end-to-end — spanning ground-side mission operations tools and vehicle-side embedded software. This person will work closely with avionics, GNC, and systems engineers to help bring the vehicle from concept to flight.

### Key Responsibilities

• Build mission operations software — ground tools that plan, execute, and monitor missions in real time
• Develop and integrate flight software for the vehicle, from architecture through test and flight readiness
• Develop ground software services for telemetry, commanding, and visualization
• Write embedded software for flight computers, sensors, and actuators
• Collaborate with avionics, propulsion, and GNC teams to define software interfaces and data models
• Contribute to flight software CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks, and simulation environments
• Support software-in-the-loop testing, hardware-in-the-loop testing, environmental testing, and flight campaigns

### Qualifications

* B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical/physics discipline *...