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Salary: USD 160,000 - 240,000 / annual
CHAOS Industries is a defense technology company founded in 2022 and backed by $1B in funding from top-tier investors including 8VC, Accel, and NEA. The company specializes in advanced sensing and detection solutions powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), serving warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams.
You will join the R&D team as a Senior Guidance Software Engineer, leading the design of guidance software for a clean-sheet airframe design. This is a hands-on technical role where you'll take ownership of critical flight control systems while collaborating with a small, high-performing engineering team.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design and implement guidance and navigation software within commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software frameworks
- Support airframe design activities and contribute to system architecture decisions
- Lead system integration of software on flight hardware, ensuring real-time performance and reliability
- Work full-time on-site at the Los Angeles (Hawthorne) office
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams on embedded systems and sensor integration
The role offers the opportunity to expand your skillset across multiple product families within a well-funded, fast-growing defense tech company with 450+ employees across 5 global offices.
Minimum 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
- Proven experience designing and implementing guidance algorithms for UAS platforms using commercial autopilot frameworks (e.g., ArduPilot)
- Practical understanding of flight dynamics for both fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms
- Extensive experience developing software on microcontroller architectures (STM32 or similar) and Linux-hosted systems (Nvidia Jetson, AMD/Xilinx SoC, Microblaze)
- Demonstrated expertise in real-time embedded software development, including hardware interfaces
- Experience integrating vendor-provided low-level drivers and firmware
- Proficiency with Agile lifecycle processes (Scrum, Continuous Integration, Test-Driven Development)
- Ability to work independently with minimal supervision and thrive in small team environments
- U.S. Person status required (position requires access to U.S.-only data systems)
Preferred Qualifications:
- Current or previous DoD security clearance
- FAA Part 107 remote pilot certification
- Experience with EO/IR and radar sensor integration
- VHDL firmware development and AMD/Xilinx FPGA embedded software experience
- Git version control proficiency
- Production-level software development and deployment experience (DevOps, DevSecOps, CI/CD with modern FOSS/COTS toolsets)
- Full lifecycle software development of high-TRL (Technology Readiness Level) systems
- Hardware/software integration, test, and verification (I&T, V&V) experience on high-TRL systems
