Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer — Flight Avionics

**Location:** Cedar Park, Texas (Austin metro) — on-site

**Experience:** 8+ years in embedded firmware development

**Employment type:** Full-time

**Eligibility:** U.S. Person required (see Export Control Requirement), VISA HOLDER PLEASE DO NOT APPLY. This is. ITAR controlled role.

About the opportunity

This is a Aerospace and defense technology based project flying the full stack — launch vehicles, lunar landers, and in-space vehicles — from a single campus in Central Texas.

This role sits inside the avionics and flight software organisation, writing the firmware that runs on vehicles which have to work the first time, at range, with no opportunity to intervene.

What you will do

Design, implement, test and qualify **flight and ground-support firmware** for avionics units across launch vehicle, lander and orbital vehicle programs
Develop **bare-metal and RTOS-based embedded C/C++** for 32-bit microcontrollers and radiation-tolerant processors
Build and maintain **embedded Linux** components — board support packages, kernel modules, device drivers, and real-time userspace applications
Own **hardware bring-up** on new avionics boards: schematic review, power sequencing, clock and reset validation, memory and peripheral verification, first-boot debug
Implement and verify **communication stacks** across spacecraft and vehicle buses — CAN / CAN-FD, SpaceWire, MIL-STD-1553, RS-422/485, SPI, I²C, UART, Ethernet
Implement **CCSDS-compliant telemetry and telecommand handling**, packet routing, time synchronisation and data storage
Design **fault detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR)** behaviour — watchdogs, redundancy management, failover logic, safe-mode entry and recovery
Develop **bootloaders and secure in-flight software update** paths with rollback protection
Interface firmware with **FPGA logic** and support co-design and integration with the FPGA team
Design for **radiation effects** — single-event upset mitigation, EDAC, memory scrubbing, latch-up detection and recovery
Write **unit, integration and hardware-in-the-loop tests**; support flatsat, processor-in-the-loop, environmental and vehicle-level integration campaigns
Support **launch and mission operations**, including anomaly investigation and root cause analysis on real flight data
Produce the design documentation, interface control documents, verification evidence and traceability required for flight qualification

Required qualifications

**Experience**

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science or a related field
**8+ years** developing production embedded firmware, with demonstrable ownership of complex subsystems from architecture through flight or field release

**Core technical**

Expert-level **C** and strong **C++ (C++11 or later)** for resource-constrained, real-time, safety-relevant systems
Deep experience with **32-bit microcontrollers and SoCs** — ARM Cortex-M and Cortex-A families, or equivalent
**RTOS** development — FreeRTOS, VxWorks, RTEMS, Zephyr or similar: task design, scheduling, priority inversion, resource contention, deterministic timing
**Embedded Linux** — Yocto or Buildroot, kernel and device driver development, device tree, PREEMPT_RT, cross-compilation toolchains
**Serial and vehicle bus protocols** — CAN / CAN-FD, SPI, I²C, UART, RS-422/485, Ethernet
Reading schematics and datasheets, and debugging at the hardware boundary with **oscilloscopes, logic analysers, JTAG and SWD**
**Version control, code review and CI/CD** discipline in an embedded context — Git, automated build and test on target hardware
**Python** for test automation, tooling and data analysis

**Engineering practice**

Rigorous debugging on real hardware, including intermittent and timing-dependent failures
Writing and maintaining requirements, design documents and verification evidence
Working to coding standards such as **MISRA C** or **CERT C**, and using static analysis in the development loop

Preferred qualifications

Prior **aerospace, space, defense, avionics or other safety-critical** firmware experience
**Radiation-tolerant or rad-hard processors** — LEON/SPARC, Microchip RTG4 or PolarFire, AMD/Xilinx Zynq or Versal, or equivalent
**SpaceWire, MIL-STD-1553, TTEthernet or Time-Sensitive Networking**
**CCSDS** standards for telemetry, telecommand and space packet protocol
Flight software architecture patterns — **cFS (core Flight System)** or comparable frameworks
**FPGA fundamentals** — VHDL or Verilog literacy sufficient to co-design and debug across the firmware/logic boundary
**Motor, valve, actuator and sensor control**; propulsion or thermal control system firmware
**Guidance, navigation and control** interface experience — IMUs, star trackers, sun sensors, GNSS receivers
**Power system firmware** — battery management, power distribution, load shedding
Experience with **NASA software engineering and assurance standards** (NPR 7150.2, NASA-STD-8739.8) or **DO-178C**
Experience taking hardware from **prototype through qualification into serial production**
Master's degree in a relevant engineering discipline

What makes this role different

**Your code flies.** Firmware written here runs on vehicles that launch, land on the Moon, and operate in cislunar space. There is no patch window after separation.
**Full-stack, single site.** Launch vehicles, landers and orbital vehicles are designed, built, tested and operated from the same Central Texas campus — so firmware engineers work directly alongside the hardware, propulsion, GNC and test teams.

Export control requirement

This position involves access to technology and technical data controlled under the **International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)** and the **Export Administration Regulations (EAR)**.

Applicants must qualify as a **U.S. Person**, defined as one of the following:

A U.S. citizen or U.S. national
A U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder)
A person granted asylum or admitted as a refugee in the United States
A temporary resident granted status under specified U.S. immigration provisions

Candidates will be required to provide documentation confirming eligibility. Employment is contingent on satisfying export control requirements, and may additionally be contingent on the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance for certain programs.

##How to apply#

Send resume to ritu.anand@methodicatech.com and alka@methodicatech.com with following#

1.Send resume and work authorization proof, citizenship passport or GC copy.

The hardest firmware bug you have diagnosed, and how you found it
Your experience with real-time constraints, fault tolerance, or safety-critical development

Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer: Avionics

Visa & sponsorship

Job description