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Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems. The Space Systems division has enabled over 1,700 missions for partners including NASA, the Space Development Agency, and the U.S. Space Force, delivering spacecraft and components for missions to the Moon and Mars.
Rocket Lab Optical Systems, based in Tucson, solves mission-critical space domain and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance challenges for Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers. The division delivers innovative electro-optical and infrared systems solutions for responsive, scalable sensing across all orbital domains.
As Principal Software Engineer, you will design flight software for spacecraft supporting Tranche 3 of the U.S. Space Development Agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. This is a technical leadership role with company-wide scope.
Key responsibilities:
- Lead development of payload flight software for Space Systems programs
- Deploy novel algorithms into austere, Size/Weight/Power-constrained sensor systems
- Lead cross-functional teams to define technical requirements and deliver integrated solutions
- Provide technical leadership across all aspects of software design, development, requirements generation, implementation, testing, and deployment
- Define and influence software architecture, design patterns, interfaces, and technical standards for scalable, maintainable solutions
- Drive performance-oriented programming leveraging accelerator technologies
- Mentor engineers across experience levels and foster engineering excellence
- Support technical planning, effort estimation, risk identification, and milestone delivery
- Communicate technical status and risks to stakeholders
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or computer engineering
- 12+ years of embedded software engineering experience
- Experience designing complex multithreaded applications
- Experience designing flight software
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance
- U.S. citizenship, lawful permanent resident status, or eligible for required ITAR authorizations
Desired qualifications:
- Familiarity with high-performance and parallel processing
- Exposure to novel architectures (FPGA, CUDA, etc.)
- Familiarity with flight software system management
- Experience with algorithm implementation
- Proficiency in Python and MATLAB
- Familiarity with numerical computing principles
