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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. CHAOS is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and London.
The Senior Guidance Software Engineer will lead the design and implementation of guidance software for a clean-sheet airframe design within the R&D team. This is a hands-on technical role with significant ownership of a critical subsystem.
Key responsibilities include:
- Implementation of guidance and navigation software within commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software frameworks
- Support for airframe design activities
- System integration of software on flight hardware
- Full-time on-site work in the Hawthorne, California office
The role offers the opportunity to expand skillsets across multiple product families and work on cutting-edge defense technology with a team of experienced military veterans and Silicon Valley innovators.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS:
Base salary range: $160,000 - $240,000 annually (plus bonus, equity, and benefits). Additional compensation includes generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and upcoming annual bonuses. Benefits include 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage; 401(k) with 50% company match up to 6% of pay; FSA; HSA; life insurance; free daily lunch; no-meeting Fridays; unlimited PTO; and casual dress code.
REQUIREMENTS:
Minimum education: Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
Minimum experience and skills:
- 10+ years of professional object-oriented software development
- Design and implementation of guidance algorithms for UAS (unmanned aerial systems) platforms using commercial autopilot frameworks such as ArduPilot
- Practical understanding of flight dynamics for fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms
- Extensive experience with software development on microcontroller architectures (STM32 or similar) and Linux hosted on Nvidia Jetson, AMD/Xilinx SoC, or Microblaze architectures
- Real-time embedded software development including hardware interfaces
- Integration of vendor-provided low-level drivers and firmware
- Experience with Agile lifecycle processes including Scrum, Continuous Integration, and Test-Driven Development methodologies
- Ability to work with minimal supervision and collaborate effectively on small teams
- 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
- EO/IR (electro-optical/infrared) sensor integration experience
- Radar sensor integration experience
- VHDL firmware development and embedded software development on AMD/Xilinx FPGAs
- Git version control experience
- Production-level software development and deployment experience including DevOps, DevSecOps, CI/CD using modern FOSS/COTS toolsets
- Full lifecycle software development of high-TRL (Technology Readiness Level) systems
- Hardware/software integration and test (I&T) and verification & validation (V&V) of high-TRL systems
