Principal Software Engineer

Firefly Aerospace•Cedar Park, TX

About The Position

Firefly Aerospace is a space and defense technology company on a mission to reliably and repeatedly launch, land, and operate space systems from Earth to the Moon and beyond. As the partner of choice for critical space missions, Firefly is the first commercial company to launch a satellite to orbit with 24-hour notice and the first company to achieve a successful Moon landing. Headquartered in north Austin, Texas, Firefly is looking for passionate, hardworking innovators to join our team and help fuel our successful trajectory into space. Our computer vision system that landed on the moon combines a flexible, multi-camera hardware architecture with onboard perception, navigation, and state estimation. Firefly is seeking a Principle Software Engineer to lead the development of critical features across the stack. In this role, you will build the systems, libraries, tools, and interfaces that connect perception algorithms with cameras, compute hardware, simulation environments, flight software, and mission operations. You will work at the intersection of modern software engineering, 3D computing, embedded systems, and spacecraft operations to create a reliable, reusable platform capable of supporting missions beyond the laboratory and beyond Earth. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in one or more of these areas, an interest in expanding into the others, and an appetite for solving complex problems where software, hardware, and mission requirements meet.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, or a related technical field; equivalent practical experience may be considered
10+ years of professional software engineering experience developing complex production systems
Strong proficiency in modern C++, including multithreading, memory management, debugging, and performance optimization
Experience designing reusable libraries, APIs, platform services, or software abstractions used across engineering teams
Experience developing and debugging software in Linux environments and integrating software with hardware, sensors, networking interfaces, or external systems
Strong understanding of software architecture, algorithms, automated testing, and maintainable software design
Demonstrated ability to resolve complex system-level issues and communicate effectively across software, algorithm, hardware, and systems engineering teams

Nice To Haves

Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
Experience developing software for spacecraft, aerospace, robotics, autonomous vehicles, defense systems, or other mission-critical applications
Proficiency in Python for tooling, automation, testing, simulation, or data analysis
Experience with 3D geometry, coordinate transformations, camera models, spatial data structures, visualization, simulation, or reconstruction
Experience integrating cameras or perception sensors with embedded Linux, GPUs, FPGAs, or other heterogeneous compute platforms
Familiarity with computer vision, visual navigation, state estimation, localization, mapping, or perception pipelines
Experience with flight software interfaces, telemetry and commanding, software- or hardware-in-the-loop testing, vehicle integration, or mission operations

Responsibilities

Lead the design, development, integration, and testing of critical features within our software stack
Build reusable C++ and Python libraries, APIs, tools, and abstractions connecting perception algorithms with cameras, compute hardware, simulation, flight software, and mission operations
Define maintainable interfaces between algorithmic and platform components across a large, production-quality codebase
Develop and optimize multithreaded, low-latency software for compute-, memory-, and bandwidth-constrained environments
Integrate cameras, sensors, heterogeneous compute platforms, and networking interfaces into reliable end-to-end systems
Develop software involving 3D geometry, coordinate transformations, camera models, spatial data, visualization, simulation, or reconstruction
Establish automated testing, build infrastructure, simulation tools, and developer workflows that improve reliability and engineering velocity
Partner with perception, GNC, avionics, flight software, systems engineering, and mission operations teams to ensure cohesive system behavior
Support software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, spacecraft integration, mission simulation, and flight operations activities
Diagnose complex system-level issues, contribute to architectural decisions, conduct technical reviews, and mentor other engineers