Staff Embedded Software Engineer

Location: Long Beach, California

Department: Interplanetary

About the Team: 

The Interplanetary Sciences Program was established to expand access to scientific exploration across our solar system. Its mission is to make planetary research faster, more affordable, and more capable than ever before by rethinking how science missions are designed, built, and operated. The program aims to enable scientists to send instruments to distant worlds without decades of development or prohibitive costs. By creating a sustainable model for interplanetary exploration, we are transforming space science from an occasional event into a continuous process of discovery that accelerates knowledge, broadens participation, and inspires the next generation of explorers. 

About the Role:

• Own the application-level software on the optical terminal processor — thermal control loops, fast steering mirror control interface, and health monitoring — writing the higher-level software that sits on top of FPGA gateware and interfaces to the payload network
• Develop Linux device drivers and hardware abstraction layers for optical terminal components, including thermal sensors, actuators, and steering mirror interfaces, translating raw hardware behavior into clean software interfaces
• Build the software interfaces between all communication subsystems (Ka-band, UHF, optical) and the rest of the data center, including packet parsers, protocol adapters, and OSI layer 2–3 implementations that connect externally developed radios to the payload network
• Implement fault detection and recovery software for communication hardware, along with command, telemetry, and mode management software for each comms subsystem — because a bug in a packet parser or driver can mean a lost downlink pass and science data that sits on disk longer than planned
• Work at the system boundary where software meets real hardware, debugging integration issues across serial buses, Ethernet interfaces, and radio transceivers alongside electrical engineers and the FPGA gateware developer

About You:

• BS/MS in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering and 5+ years of relevant experience
• Strong systems programming skills in C, with experience writing software that talks directly to hardware — device drivers, register-level interfaces, or bus protocol implementations
• Experience with Linux device driver development and real-time or embedded software design
• Solid network programming skills: sockets, packet handling, and layer 2/3 protocol implementation
• Comfort implementing control loops in software and understanding enough digital communications to interface correctly with modem hardware, even if you're not designing the waveforms yourself

Nice to haves but not required:  

• Experience with spacecraft communication subsystem software or radio interface development
• Familiarity with CCSDS packet structures and protocols
• Hands-on experience with serial and bus interfaces to radio hardware — SPI, I2C, UART, and Ethernet-based control planes
• Knowledge of optical communication terminal operation concepts or free-space optical link systems
• Experience with thermal control loop implementation and tuning
• Background in hardware abstraction layer design for systems with multiple hardware variants or evolving interfaces
• Comfort in a hardware lab: serial consoles, logic analyzers, and debugging signal integrity issues alongside the electronics team