Avionics Software Engineer

Role overview

Lodestarspace is hiring Avionics Software Engineers in London across three technical focus areas. Depending on your experience, you will take ownership of one area while collaborating closely across avionics, autonomy, AI/ML, and hardware.

Technical focus areas (choose the best fit)

1) Flight Software Engineering

• Design and develop deterministic, safety-critical, fault-tolerant flight software for autonomous spacecraft.
• Build robust software for RTOS-based flight computers, implementing FDIR and defensive programming.
• Integrate, test, and validate mission-critical software on representative spacecraft platforms.

2) Distributed Middleware Engineering

• Develop distributed middleware for communication, workload orchestration, and telemetry across heterogeneous onboard compute.
• Build resilient infrastructure including high-performance IPC, networking, process supervision, and fail-safe OTA update mechanisms.
• Deliver scalable, fault-tolerant software platforms for autonomous operations.

3) Embedded Linux Engineering

• Develop and maintain custom embedded Linux platforms for NVIDIA Jetson-based flight computers, from board bring-up to deployment.
• Optimize kernel performance via real-time tuning, low-level driver development, profiling, and selective kernel slimming.
• Architect a hardened, minimal-footprint Linux-based operating system.

Qualifications (desired across all three)

• BEng/MEng in Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
• Strong foundation in C++.
• Experience with embedded software using Linux or RTOS (e.g., RTEMS, FreeRTOS).
• Solid understanding of multi-process architectures and inter-process communication.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work independently and collaboratively.
• Demonstrated debugging and performance characterization skills.

Preferred skills & experience

• Communication protocol knowledge.
• Familiarity with containerisation and deployment tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Deep understanding of Linux kernel architecture, bootloaders (e.g., U-Boot), and low-level system bring-up.
• Fault-tolerant design principles and defensive/error handling in resource-constrained systems.
• Experience with real-time Linux kernel tuning.
• Space-industry background.
• Experience with publish-subscribe middleware.
• Exposure to fail-safe OTA update frameworks.