Space Robotics Software Engineer at Phenix Space

Location: San Francisco

Department: Phenix Space

Location Type: IN_OFFICE

Employment Type: FULL_TIME

Space Robotics Software Engineer

About the role

What you will own:

• Flight software for our systems: robot control, reasoning and task logic, telemetry, fault management, safe modes and recovery.
• Real-time control loops for actuators and sensors, and the sensor fusion that feeds them.
• Packaging, deploying and testing software on a robotic system.

• Embedded and low-level software that talks to hardware: firmware, drivers, hardware abstraction layers and real-time buses such as EtherCAT and CAN.
• Software for space-constrained compute: power, thermal and radiation limits.

• Driving big parts of the system architecture and owning features end to end, from requirements and interfaces through hardware and flight.
• Integrating software with hardware alongside our electronics, robotics and GNC engineers.

• Testing from simulation and hardware-in-the-loop to the bench, environmental test and flight, and iterating on the results.
• Working hand in hand with hardware owners so we can test new capabilities quickly.

• B.S., M.S. or PhD in computer science, electrical, computer, aerospace or mechanical engineering, mechatronics, or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years writing production software for physical systems: spacecraft, robots, drones, vehicles or similar.
• Strong C or C++ for real-time and safety-critical systems, including embedded firmware on microcontrollers, plus Python.
• Low-level communication protocols such as EtherCAT, CAN, SPI, I2C and UART.
• You think in systems: you understand the hardware your code drives and how one subsystem affects the others.
• You have shipped and deployed software to hardware that had to work outside the lab.
• You are deeply curious, have a can-do attitude, and dive deep into any layer of the stack when the problem calls for it.
• U.S. person status, required for export control (ITAR/EAR).

• Space flight experience, satellite integration or in-space robotics.
• Robotics, motion control or actuation systems.
• Radiation-tolerant software practices and space-grade processors.
• Perception with cameras or depth sensors.
• Startup experience, where you took ownership of problems nobody assigned you.
• A track record of finding new ways to approach hard problems.

• Build the next layer of space infrastructure: one that makes today’s space applications orders of magnitude better and brings new ones to orbit.
• Your work will fly to space within your first year at Phenix.
• You will set the software architecture we fly for years.
• Join a multidisciplinary team from Dexterity, NASA JPL, SpaceX, Nimble, Boeing, Honeywell Space and Capella Space, among others, that executes with discipline, keeps evolving our capabilities and makes progress toward our vision every day.
• Build a space robotics system that has never flown before and bring physical AI to space.
• Own wide-ranging work across software, hardware and test, with room to grow into a technical leader.
• Move fast on problems in robot control, space-rated computing and autonomy.