Senior Embedded Software Engineer

Team: Software Engineering

Location: Alameda HQ

Commitment: Full-Time

Workplace Type: onsite

About Pyka

Pyka’s goal is to provide society with a new form of safe, clean, and cost-effective transportation enabled by autonomous electric aviation.

To get there, we’re taking a different approach than most. We're applying our technologies to every industry where autonomous electric aircraft can be useful, starting with the highest value and most dangerous jobs. In doing so, we're building game-changing products manufactured at scale, while perfecting the safety, reliability, and capabilities of our autonomy engine and electric propulsion systems. 

We design, develop and manufacture an ecosystem of technologies including proprietary flight control software, avionics, high power density motors, motor controllers, batteries, and custom carbon-fiber composite airframes.

Today, we supply autonomous electric aircraft for cargo transport and crop protection to real-world customers across four separate continents and have secured industry-first regulatory approvals from the FAA. Our cargo aircraft enables remote connectivity, enhances express delivery networks, and ensures fast and reliable shipping of critical supplies to areas in need. Our crop protection aircraft offers agricultural services providers and farmers an autonomous tool to make aerial application safer, more precise, and less harmful to surrounding environments. Both vehicles are highly economical to operate, easy to deploy, and significantly reduce CO2 emissions in their respective industries. 

What you work on at Pyka makes people’s lives better now and brings the future of electric aviation one step closer each day. 

Responsibilities

• Own the full firmware lifecycle for new flight and auxiliary computers — from board bring-up and driver development to integration, testing, and flight-ready release
• Maintain and develop Pyka’s hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing environment, enabling automated validation of flight-critical systems
• Implement drivers for off-the-shelf and custom sensors (I²C, SPI, CAN, UART/serial, etc.)
• Bring up new hardware platforms, including bootloaders, board initialization, hardware abstraction layers, and diagnostics
• Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams to define interfaces, requirements, and validation plans
• Investigate and resolve hardware/software interaction issues across microcontrollers, sensors, and embedded Linux systems

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience developing embedded software or firmware for real-time or hardware-integrated systems
• Strong proficiency in C/C++ and experience with microcontrollers and embedded Linux (e.g., BalenaOS)
• Comfortable implementing sensor and peripheral drivers (I²C, SPI, CAN, UART, ethernet)
• Comfortable with git and modern collaborative software development workflows
• Able to independently own complex, cross-disciplinary engineering projects

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with FPGAs or HDL development
• Experience with electric motor controllers or motor control firmware
• Familiarity with hardware-in-the-loop testing and embedded automated test frameworks
• We understand that candidates bring different strengths and experiences, and you don’t need to meet every qualification to be considered. If this role excites you, we’d love to learn more about you. You may be a great fit even if your background doesn’t align perfectly with the list.

Compensation & Benefits

• 166,000-200,000 per year base salary + equity. Compensation will vary depending on location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Salary ranges are subject to change.
• Employer-sponsored health, dental and vision insurance
• SA with employer matching
• 401(k)
• Paid holidays, generous PTO, and additional unpaid time off
• Voluntary short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance
• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• Free catered lunch and plenty of snacks

Export Control Requirements

This position requires access to technology, software and other information that is subject to governmental access control restrictions, due to export controls.  Employment in this position is conditioned on the continued availability of government authorization to authorize release of such items, to the extent required, including without limitation an export license, or other documentation required to establish authorization to receive access to such items. 

Company may delay commencement of employment, rescind an offer of employment, terminate employment, and/or may modify job responsibilities, compensation, benefits, and/or access to Company facilities and information systems, as Company deems appropriate, in order to ensure compliance with applicable government access control restrictions.

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We do not work with external recruiters; if you are an external recruiter, please do not reach out.