Director of Flight Software Engineering (Embedded Flight Software)

Location: On-site in Burlingame, California, United States

Salary: $218,000–$274,000 per year, plus equity

Company

hirify.global develops Pulsar, a low-Earth-orbit satellite infrastructure platform providing precise, resilient positioning and navigation services.

What you will do

• Lead and grow the Flight Software organization, including embedded developers and verification and validation engineers.
• Define the flight software architecture, interfaces, and development roadmap for the Pulsar satellite constellation.
• Own end-to-end software delivery from requirements decomposition and design through implementation, testing, launch, and on-orbit operations.
• Establish scalable development practices covering configuration management, CI/CD, unit testing, code quality, documentation, and over-the-air updates.
• Drive software quality, reliability, process maturity, risk reduction, and cost improvements.
• Partner with systems, avionics, payload, GNC, ground segment, and senior leadership teams on technology strategy and resource planning.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, or a related STEM field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant embedded, real-time, or high-reliability systems experience.
• 3+ years of people leadership experience managing software engineers or technical leads.
• Experience leading software architecture and delivery for complex systems, preferably in aerospace, automotive, defense, or similar domains.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, configuration management, and automated testing.
• For this U.S. role, applicants must be U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or other protected individuals under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).

Nice to have

• 5+ years developing or leading embedded or flight software in aerospace or space systems.
• Experience taking satellite or spacecraft software from early design through launch and on-orbit operations.
• Experience with multi-satellite fleets, over-the-air updates, fault management, and constellation-scale operations.
• Familiarity with RTOS, space flight software frameworks such as cFS or F´, C/C++, and hardware/software integration and test environments.
• Experience building high-reliability processes and influencing senior-level technical and program decisions across multidisciplinary teams.

Culture & Benefits

• Equity is included in the compensation package.
• Work in a high-reliability aerospace environment focused on technical excellence, ownership, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Support hiring, coaching, individual development plans, and the growth of a high-performing engineering organization.