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Salary: GBP 55,000 - 75,000 / annual
Lodestar Space is developing autonomous defense capabilities for high-value space assets in orbit. The company's flagship product, MITHRIL, is an AI-enabled autonomy software suite that augments spacecraft with the ability to autonomously detect, characterize, and reversibly neutralize orbital threats.
We are hiring Avionics Software Engineers across three technical specializations:
**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 (Failure Detection, Isolation, and Recovery) and defensive programming techniques. Collaborate with autonomy, AI, and hardware teams to integrate, test, and validate mission-critical software on representative spacecraft platforms.
**Distributed Middleware Engineering**: Develop distributed middleware enabling communication, workload orchestration, and telemetry across heterogeneous onboard compute systems. Build resilient software infrastructure including high-performance inter-process communication, networking, process supervision, and fail-safe Over-The-Air (OTA) update mechanisms. Deliver scalable platforms supporting fault-tolerant autonomous operations.
**Embedded Linux Engineering**: Develop and maintain custom embedded Linux platforms for NVIDIA Jetson-based flight computers, from board bring-up through deployment. Optimize kernel performance through real-time tuning, low-level driver development, system profiling, and selective kernel slimming. Architect hardened, minimal-footprint Linux-based operating systems.
Required qualifications: BEng/MEng in Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent; strong C++ foundation; experience with embedded systems using Linux or RTOS (RTEMS, FreeRTOS); solid understanding of multi-process architectures and IPC; strong debugging and performance characterization skills.
Preferred: communication protocols knowledge, containerization tools (Docker, Kubernetes), Linux kernel architecture expertise, fault-tolerant design principles, real-time Linux tuning, space industry background, publish-subscribe middleware experience, OTA update framework exposure.
