Principal Software Development Engineer

Wisk Aero•Mountain View, CA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

At Wisk, we're transforming the future of urban mobility through safe, all-electric, autonomous flight. We are a passionate team working together toward a sustainable future, solving high-impact problems that have never been solved before. By delivering everyday flight for everyone, we're making it possible to spend less time getting there and more time being there. If you want to be part of shaping the future of mobility, then read on! We are looking for a highly experienced and technically profound Principal Software Development Engineer to join our team. This pivotal role requires deep expertise in safety critical and modern software architectures and development methods, along with rigorous development processes, and mandatory compliance with leading industry safety standards (e.g., DO-178C, ISO 26262). Candidates must have a broad background with extensive experience in developing high-integrity systems across industries such as aerospace, automotive, rail, and defense. As the Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as a key technical leader, mentor, and architect, ensuring the highest levels of quality, reliability, and overall safety are met for the entire autonomous vehicle service, encompassing both the aircraft and essential ground systems. You will be supporting the Digital Products department within the Software and Simulation Systems (S3) organization. The Digital Products team is responsible for the complete life cycle for software and firmware used across our aircraft and ground systems. This is a hybrid work opportunity. At Wisk, this means working onsite at our Mountain View HQ office 3 days per week with flexibility for the remainder of the days. In this role, you will have the opportunity to make a lasting impact on aviation by establishing efficient, effective, modular, scalable, and safe architectural practices and operationalizing them through implementation in software products as part of Wisk's software team for an autonomous passenger-carrying eVTOL service. What you will do: In this role, situated within the S3 Organization, you will serve as a Principal Software Development Engineer dedicated to the development of a novel aircraft designed for the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) market. You will define, architect, and champion the software framework for complex safety-critical embedded systems, ensuring scalability, performance, and adherence to design constraints. You will participate in, lead, and execute technical trade studies to evaluate design alternatives, technologies, and methodologies, ensuring the selection of optimal solutions with respect to performance, safety, and cost. You will be involved in technology maturation activities. You will ensure adherence to recognized safety standards, specifically DO-178C, DO-331, and DO-332, across the entire software lifecycle, encompassing planning, requirements specification, design, coding, and integration. You will participate and provide guidance during the requirements specification and design phases - decomposition of system requirements into traceable and verifiable high-level software requirements, and subsequently into low-level requirements or design models. You will collaborate with various software product teams and ensure software architecture and design principles laid out are followed through design and implementation of robust, high-performance embedded code primarily in C/C++ for RTOS-based environments. You will be part of software development and support activities during the software development life cycle. You will establish and continuously improve engineering best practices, coding standards, and requisite tools to maintain a highly reliable software development environment. You will provide technical mentorship and guidance to senior and staff engineers, serving as a software engineering domain expert within the organization. You will serve as a principal software liaison with the Systems Engineering, Hardware Engineering, and Safety teams to ensure the seamless integration and validation of the entire system. You will support internal and SOI audits.

Requirements

BS in Computer Science, Electronics, or Electrical engineering, with a minimum of 15 years of substantial experience in the design and development of safety critical-software in the aerospace, automotive, rail or defence industries. Alternatively, 10 years of experience with a Master's degree, or with a PhD’s degree.
Demonstrated expertise in designing and developing software architecture for high-integrity, safety-critical embedded systems.
Strong, practical proficiency in programming languages such as C, C++, and Assembly, along with embedded software toolchains.
Experience working with various Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS).
Solid understanding of ARINC 653, Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA), and various communication protocols relevant to avionics, including I2C, SPI, CAN, RS485, Arinc429, and Ethernet, as well as bootloaders and interrupt handling.
Strong foundation of software and hardware, with a deep understanding of computer architecture, including microcontrollers, FPGA, memory management and peripherals.
Ability to think from a system level perspective, and understand the relationship between software and hardware.
Highly motivated, self-starting individual with strong communication skills and a positive team player.
Strong theoretical and practical knowledge of design patterns, architectural patterns, and software modeling languages.
Expertise in performing rigorous trade studies and making data-driven architectural decisions.
Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate complex design concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Preferably, experience on multiple aerospace projects governed by DO-178C and its supplements.
Experience with model-based software design and development techniques is a plus.

Responsibilities

Define, architect, and champion the software framework for complex safety-critical embedded systems, ensuring scalability, performance, and adherence to design constraints.
Participate in, lead, and execute technical trade studies to evaluate design alternatives, technologies, and methodologies, ensuring the selection of optimal solutions with respect to performance, safety, and cost.
Be involved in technology maturation activities.
Ensure adherence to recognized safety standards, specifically DO-178C, DO-331, and DO-332, across the entire software lifecycle, encompassing planning, requirements specification, design, coding, and integration.
Participate and provide guidance during the requirements specification and design phases - decomposition of system requirements into traceable and verifiable high-level software requirements, and subsequently into low-level requirements or design models.
Collaborate with various software product teams and ensure software architecture and design principles laid out are followed through design and implementation of robust, high-performance embedded code primarily in C/C++ for RTOS-based environments.
Be part of software development and support activities during the software development life cycle.
Establish and continuously improve engineering best practices, coding standards, and requisite tools to maintain a highly reliable software development environment.
Provide technical mentorship and guidance to senior and staff engineers, serving as a software engineering domain expert within the organization.
Serve as a principal software liaison with the Systems Engineering, Hardware Engineering, and Safety teams to ensure the seamless integration and validation of the entire system.
Support internal and SOI audits.