Flight Software Engineer

Katalyst Space Technologies•Broomfield, CO

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Katalyst is building a fleet of dual-use multipurpose robotic space vehicles to create the future where maneuvering, upgrading, refueling, resupply and exploration are as routine as they are on Earth. This role involves owning the core flight software platform that every subsystem, sensor, and radio on the vehicle communicates through. You will be responsible for the software running on the first vehicle, which is currently in orbit and performing real proximity operations. This is a small team environment with real hardware, where your code flies and you monitor its performance from the console.

Requirements

Deep, hands-on C++ on real-time or resource-constrained systems that had to work, RTOS or embedded Linux
Fault-tolerant thinking: what happens when this module fails, how the vehicle stays safe and commandable, how it recovers without waiting for the ground
The habit of finishing: you close what you commit to, you verify before you call it done, and when a date slips we hear it from you first
The instinct to challenge an assumption, back the challenge with data, and convince people.
BS in computer science, computer engineering, aerospace, electrical engineering, or equivalent proficiency.
US person (ITAR).

Nice To Haves

cFS, custom middleware, or other spacecraft and robotics frameworks.
Radios, CCSDS, or spacecraft comms stacks
SIL/HIL test infrastructure you built or ran yourself
Rust, or safety-critical process experience (MISRA, NASA-STD-8739.8)
Pose estimation, relative navigation, or vision-consumer integration

Responsibilities

Own core flight software subsystems end to end: telemetry and messaging, the command and sequencing path, fault detection and recovery, hardware interfaces (UART, CAN, TCP/IP, RS-422), and the radios that keep us commandable
Write modern C++ on a Linux flight computer, Python where it moves faster, and keep it memory-safe and thread-safe under schedule pressure
Take changes from design through review, flatsat and hardware-in-the-loop verification, deploy, and on-orbit behavior, and close them, verified and handed over, not demoed
Run point on anomalies: diagnose from telemetry and logs, decide what is safe to command, then fix the class of defect, not the instance
Make the team stronger: review flight code with rigor, hand systems off with documentation that outlives you, and coach less experienced engineers to shippable instead of rewriting their work
Defend your design decisions to GNC, avionics, operations, and leadership, with data