Spacecraft Flight Computing Engineer

Job not on LinkedIn

September 16

🏄 California – Remote

Although this job is listed in California, this company may be open to hiring remote in other states.

⏰ Full Time

🟡 Mid-level

🟠 Senior

👷🏻‍♀️ Engineer

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The Exploration Company

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We democratise space exploration, making it affordable, sustainable and open. For space & non-space industries. A global endeavour with European roots.

51 - 200 employees

📋 Description

• Design, implement, and maintain real-time embedded computing systems for spacecraft avionics. • Apply fault-tolerant computing techniques to ensure reliable operation in the presence of radiation-induced upsets and anomalies. • Develop and optimize our RTOS and Linux-based real-time operating environments, including kernel configuration, bootloader, device drivers, and system-level performance tuning. • Perform hardware design tasks, including schematic capture, PCB layout, and component selection using Altium Designer, with emphasis on radiation-tolerant design practices. • Develop, synthesize, and validate FPGA designs (VHDL/Verilog), incorporating mitigation strategies such as TMR, ECC, and scrubbing. • Design, configure, and troubleshoot IP networking protocols, with focus on TSN for deterministic networking and PTP for precise time synchronization across spacecraft systems. • Conduct system integration, hardware/software debugging, and fault injection testing to verify robustness under radiation and fault conditions. • Collaborate closely with flight software, avionics, and systems engineering teams to define computing, networking, and interface requirements. • Support mission operations through anomaly resolution and post-flight analysis of radiation-induced effects such as SEUs and TID.

🎯 Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field. • Strong proficiency in C/C++ and Python for embedded software development and automation. • Hands-on experience with real-time systems and Linux-based embedded computing. • Practical expertise in fault-tolerant computing methods (redundancy, checkpoint/restart, graceful degradation). • Knowledge of IP networking protocols (TCP/IP, UDP, routing, switching) with direct experience implementing TSN and PTP in real-time or mission-critical environments. • Understanding of radiation effects on electronics and software, with experience implementing mitigation strategies at multiple system levels. • Experience with system-level debugging tools and hardware/software integration. • Strong skills in writing, debugging and performance tuning low-level software for Linux and/or a RTOS, including the bootloader and device drivers. • Strong skills in hardware design using Altium Designer and/or Cadence Allegro for schematics and PCB layout. • Experience with multi-gigabit SERDES interfaces like SGMII, PCI Express and Serial RapidIO (preferred). • Solid background in FPGA development (VHDL/Verilog, synthesis, simulation, timing closure, hardware validation). • Familiarity with modern multi-core ARM-based System-on-Chip hardware, including the internal architecture. • Experience writing bare-metal code. • Exposure to radiation testing (heavy-ion, proton, or TID) and analysis. • Background in hardware-software co-design for reliability and fault-tolerance. • Prior hands-on experience supporting space missions (preferred).

🏖️ Benefits

• Competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits, and opportunities for technical growth. • Direct involvement in building mission-critical spacecraft systems that operate in extreme environments. • A collaborative engineering culture where hands-on innovation, resilience, and reliability drive success. • Relocation assistance is provided for those willing to relocate including visa sponsorship where applicable. • We’re Agile - we make decisions fast whilst keeping our goals and systems in mind • We’re Open and Collaborative - we are transparent about risks and obstacles • We have a lot of Fun - we refuel our energy knowing we are democratising space.