Principal Software Engineer - TS/SCINew$200K

Rocket Lab is the end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems that keep the world connected, protected, expand humanity’s reach to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. We move fast, build real hardware for meaningful missions, and make the impossible routine.

What you'll do

• Lead Software Architecture Design: Define and evolve the end-to-end software architecture for flight and ground systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and mission success.

• Develop Flight Software: Design application software for spacecraft operating within Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) such as VxWorks, or embedded Linux, including hardware drivers for spacecraft sensors and actuators such as IMUs, Star Trackers, and Reaction Wheels.

• Build Ground Software Systems: Architect and deploy web-based ground software platforms for spacecraft operations, integrating flight and ground systems to support diverse mission profiles.

• Test and Validate Systems: Develop unit tests within a Continuous Integration (CI) framework and collaborate with hardware-in-the-loop test engineers to verify combined software and hardware functionality.

• Collaborate and Lead: Provide technical direction and mentorship to engineering teams, act as a trusted advisor to leadership, and partner with stakeholders to align software systems with mission requirements.

• Support On-Orbit Operations: Ensure software performance in harsh environments and contribute to mission-critical operations.

What they're looking for

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science, or a related technical discipline.
• + years of professional software development experience, including embedded systems and ground software.
• Proven expertise in architecting scalable and reliable software systems for aerospace or defense applications.
• Proficiency in C and C++ for embedded software development and python for testing.