Senior Flight Software Engineer Verified today

About Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab is the end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems that keep the world connected, protected, expand humanity's reach to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

About the Role

As a Senior Flight Software Engineer in Rocket Lab's Space Systems Software team, you'll serve as a technical expert across three equally important areas: support for current missions on orbit or in development; next-generation flight software for future large, autonomous satellite constellations; and embedded software for hardware product lines such as Gauss thrusters, reaction wheels, and Frontier radios.

Key expectations include technical advisory and guidance across all three domains, as well as technical risk identification and mitigation. You'll guide multi-disciplinary teams to deliver flight and embedded software on schedule and on budget.

What You'll Do

• Architect flight software solutions in close collaboration with subject matter experts in Avionics Hardware, Systems, GNC, and Operations, balancing work across anomaly resolution and sustaining engineering for current missions; next-generation flight software for autonomous satellite constellations including C&DH, GNC/ACS, FDIR, mode management, telemetry, payload orchestration, and autonomy; and embedded software for hardware product lines including Gauss thruster, reaction wheels, Frontier radios, star trackers, IMUs, EPS/battery management, and valve drives.
• Work closely with design engineers to assess conceptual designs, perform system trade studies, develop integrated design solutions, and formulate system margin strategy with particular attention to autonomy, fault management, constellation-scale operability, and reuse of embedded software components across product lines.
• Develop and maintain robust regression testing frameworks that span flight software and embedded software product lines, enabling rapid, reliable verification across current missions, new constellation builds, and component-level releases.
• Develop for 32-bit Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers.
• Develop for memory-constrained and code space constrained targets.
• Write portable code that runs unchanged across targets (e.g., Cortex-M4, Cortex-M7, x86, PowerPC).
• Microcontroller programming in C/C++.
• Develop with real-time operating systems.
• Write and maintain device drivers.
• Work with embedded communication interfaces and protocols such as CAN bus (2.0 and FD), SPI, and RS-422.
• Write safety critical code following similar rules to JPL's "The Power of 10" and MISRA C/C++.
• Develop for and on Linux/WSL and work comfortably in virtualized environments.
• Write scripts and automated tests in Python.
• Work from datasheets and schematics, and collaborate regularly with electrical, systems, and test engineers.

What You'll Bring

• Tertiary qualification in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or similar.
• Minimum of 5 years professional experience within a relevant discipline.
• Excellent problem-solving skills.
• Team player with a positive attitude.
• Technical experience with 32-bit Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers (e.g., Cortex-M4/M7).
• Memory- and code-space-constrained development.
• C/C++ microcontroller programming.
• Real-time operating systems.
• Device driver development.
• Embedded communication interfaces (CAN 2.0/FD, SPI, RS-422).
• Working from datasheets and schematics alongside electrical, systems, and test engineers.
• Combination of technical expertise in avionics hardware, avionics software, GNC, and/or communications with broader awareness of spacecraft disciplines such as propulsion, thermal, power, structures, and mechanisms.
• Direct experience in development, integration, and on-orbit operation of aerospace systems.
• Exposure to embedded software development on resource-constrained hardware.
• Ability to manage to a plan and adjust to evolving requirements or external constraints.
• Clear communication of flight software and embedded software architecture to internal and external customers.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Rust.
• Experience with Robot Framework.
• Experience with UDP/TCP networking.
• Experience writing and maintaining bootloaders.
• Experience with propulsion systems, especially electric propulsion systems.
• FPGA experience or familiarity.
• CI/CD experience using GitLab and TeamCity.
• Experience with Docker/Kubernetes.

Important Information

For security reasons, background checks will be undertaken prior to any employment offers being made. These checks will include nationality checks as it is a requirement of this position that you be eligible to access equipment and data regulated by the United States' International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

Under these Regulations, you may be ineligible for this role if you do not hold citizenship of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, the European Union, or a country that is part of NATO, or if you hold ineligible dual citizenship or nationality.