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Salary: USD 160,000 - 240,000 / annual
CHAOS Industries is seeking a Senior Guidance Software Engineer to join the R&D team and lead the design of guidance software for a clean-sheet airframe design. The role focuses on implementing guidance and navigation software within commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software frameworks, supporting airframe design activities, and integrating software on flight hardware. You will work full-time on-site in the Los Angeles (Hawthorne) office.
CHAOS Industries is a defense technology company founded in 2022 and headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and London. The company has raised $1B in funding from leading investors including 8VC, Accel, and NEA. CHAOS specializes in advanced sensing and detection solutions powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), serving warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design and implement guidance and navigation software within COTS software frameworks
- Support airframe design activities
- Integrate software on flight hardware systems
- Collaborate with small engineering teams with minimal supervision
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field
- 10+ years of professional object-oriented software development experience
- Experience designing and implementing guidance algorithms for UAS platforms using commercial autopilot frameworks (e.g., ArduPilot)
- Practical understanding of flight dynamics for fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms
- Extensive experience with microcontroller architectures (STM32 or similar) and Linux on Nvidia Jetson, AMD/Xilinx SoC, or Microblaze platforms
- Real-time embedded software development experience including hardware interfaces
- Experience integrating vendor-provided low-level drivers and firmware
- Proficiency with Agile lifecycle processes (Scrum, Continuous Integration, Test-Driven Development)
- U.S. Person status required (access to U.S.-only data systems)
Preferred Qualifications:
- Current or previous DoD security clearance
- FAA Part 107 remote pilot certification
- EO/IR and radar sensor integration experience
- VHDL firmware development and AMD/Xilinx FPGA experience
- Git version control experience
- Production-level software development and deployment (DevOps, DevSecOps, CI/CD)
- Full lifecycle software development of high-TRL systems
- Hardware/software integration and verification of high-TRL systems
