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Salary: USD 175,000 - 225,000 / annual
Cowboy Space Corporation is building space-based solar energy infrastructure to solve the global energy crisis. The company develops modular, scalable satellites that collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit and transmit energy via infrared lasers, power on-orbit computing clusters, and provide secure optical data transport. Founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt (co-founder of Robinhood), the company has raised ~$365 million from top-tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
As Embedded Software Engineering Lead, you will lead the embedded software team developing real-time, flight-critical software for the satellite constellation. You are responsible for overall quality, reliability, and fault tolerance of embedded software across satellite control, power beaming operations, and ground receiver systems.
Key responsibilities include: leading and mentoring embedded software engineers; planning and coordinating firmware releases with sprint management and stakeholder communication; designing fault-tolerant, high-performance software for mission-critical operations; developing real-time embedded software for satellite control, data processing, communication, and laser power transmission; integrating embedded software with spacecraft avionics, sensors, actuators, and communication systems; and building software-in-the-loop (SITL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) validation environments.
Required qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field; 2+ years leading an embedded software development team; 5+ years as an embedded software engineer (aerospace/satellite preferred); proficiency in C, C++, and/or Rust; bare-metal embedded software experience; hardware interface experience (SPI, I2C, UART, LVDS); familiarity with embedded debugging tools (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, JTAG); and Linux-based embedded systems knowledge.
Preferred: 5+ years leading aerospace/satellite embedded software teams; FPGA development and high-speed embedded computing experience; space environment software development; and satellite communication protocol familiarity.
The role is based in San Carlos, CA. ITAR compliance required: U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or eligible for State Department authorization.
