Navigation Engineer (Embedded Software)
$190,000–$280,000 year
On-siteMountain View Santa Clara County, California, United States
Job Summary
Develop and maintain embedded flight software for onboard navigation capabilities in modern C/C++, designing low-level interfaces for sensors, timing sources, and avionics. Build device drivers, board support interfaces, and hardware abstraction layers while implementing real-time data acquisition, validation, buffering, and timestamping for telemetry. Integrate estimation, propagation, and sensor-processing components into reliable flight applications, defining software data models and message schemas. Implement fault detection and recovery logic for degraded modes, sensor dropouts, and timing discontinuities, optimizing for bounded latency and deterministic execution. Support hardware-software integration, simulation infrastructure, and automated testing pipelines, collaborating closely with astrodynamics, GNSS, timing, and mission operations teams.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related STEM field, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of relevant professional experience developing embedded software, flight software, avionics software, robotics software, spacecraft software, or other high-reliability real-time software
- Proficiency in modern C++ for embedded or resource-constrained software development
- Experience developing software for embedded systems
- Working knowledge of hardware-software interfaces
- Working knowledge of software integration with sensors, avionics, timing sources, or spacecraft subsystems
- Experience building automated tests, simulation tools, hardware-in-the-loop tests, or other validation infrastructure for embedded systems
- Experience with Linux-based development environments, Git, CMake or similar build systems, and automated testing workflows
- Working knowledge related to debugging numerical or floating-point issues
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
Desired Qualifications
- 8+ years of relevant experience and the ability to independently own technical workstreams
- Experience developing flight software for spacecraft, launch vehicles, aircraft, autonomous systems, robotics, or other mission-critical embedded platforms
- Experience with spacecraft avionics, flight processors, board bring-up, sensor integration, or flight hardware integration and test
- Experience implementing FDIR, redundancy management, degraded-mode operation, watchdog handling, or autonomous recovery logic
- Experience with navigation-related flight software, GNSS receivers, timing systems, etc.
- Experience designing telemetry and command interfaces, onboard data products, configuration systems, and operational software workflows
- Experience with deterministic replay, fault injection, Monte Carlo testing, software-in-the-loop, processor-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, or mission operations support
- Experience with high-reliability software practices, requirements traceability, code reviews, static analysis, CI/CD, and release processes for flight or safety-critical systems
- Familiarity with CCSDS, spacecraft command and telemetry systems, flight data handling, or ground-to-flight software interfaces
- Ability and willingness to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government Security Clearance
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