Senior Spacecraft Firmware Engineer, C++ (Aerospace)

Location: On-site in El Segundo, California, United States

Salary: $169,000–$216,000 annually, plus potential stock options.

Company

Varda develops commercial space infrastructure, including in-orbit pharmaceutical processing payloads, reentry capsules, heat shields, and satellite buses, which are built, integrated, and tested in-house.

What you will do

• Develop reliable firmware controlling spacecraft, satellite bus, and reentry capsule operations across the full mission lifecycle.
• Own software design, development, testing, integration, and flight operational support.
• Capture requirements and perform initial design trades for open-ended spacecraft software problems.
• Write structured bare-metal, RTOS-based, or Linux-based software for embedded processors in C++.
• Build highly reliable and highly available software systems.
• Apply software testing, verification, and validation techniques to ensure system quality and performance.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, physics, engineering, or equivalent technical experience in safety-critical software.
• At least 5 years of experience developing spacecraft or similar safety-critical software.
• Experience developing and testing real-time embedded hardware and software systems.
• Strong C++ development experience and understanding of C++ language concepts.
• Must be authorized to work in the United States and qualify as a U.S. person for access to export-controlled technology under ITAR requirements.

Nice to have

• Experience with safety-critical software, particularly in aerospace applications.
• Experience with Python or Rust.
• Strong understanding of computer architecture, operating systems, data structures, and computer networking.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employees receive flexible paid time off and 12 paid holidays.
• Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance, with FSA and employer-matched HSA options.
• Parental, family-building, pregnancy, parenting, and menopause benefits.
• 401(k) plan with a 6% immediately vested employer match and incentive equity.
• Relocation support may be available for new hires.
• Daily lunch, twice-weekly dinner, wellness reimbursement, EV charging, and team events.