Principal Software Engineer at Firefly Aerospace

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Dream Big at Firefly

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Life at Firefly

At Firefly, we’re focused on making space attainable for everyone – including you! Each team member’s passion, dedication, and innovative ideas have a direct impact on fueling our successful trajectory into space. And there’s no shortage of meaningful projects to work on at Firefly. With launch, lunar, and orbital vehicles, Firefly has a diverse line of business with opportunities to get hands-on experience launching rockets, operating in space, and landing on the Moon.

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More cleanroom space. More spacecraft in...

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Production is ramping up!
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Twenty-five years later, we remember the lives...

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In this Manufacturing Minute, our Tooling...

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Keeping our eyes on the Moon. 👁️🌙
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Our Values

Headquartered in the Lone Star State, Firefly’s hardworking team reflects Texas’ GO BIG culture in everything we do. We build big, achieve big, and dream big. We’re building launch vehicles and spacecraft to provide rapid, reliable space access. We’ve achieved some incredible wins, including the first successful commercial Moon landing. And we’re dreaming bigger than this planet with ambitions to Mars, Venus, and beyond. Our core values are what drive us along the way.

Passion

Fireflies believe in perseverance, responsiveness, and mentoring others with a focus on inspiring a better future.

Accountability

Fireflies act with integrity and take ownership of our actions, commitments, decisions, and outcomes.

Collaboration

Fireflies work in alignment across teams and communicate clearly with mutual respect for one another.

Excellence

Fireflies deliver high-quality work through technical rigor and timely disciplined execution for our customers.

Our Benefits

We take care of our Fireflies with some of the best benefits in the industry. Our mission to make space for everyone starts with our employees and allowing them to make space for their family, their career, and their future.

Space for You

• Unlimited PTO for exempt employees
• 3-month sabbatical for every 5 years of service
• Medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance
• Mental health services
• Paid military leave

Space for Your Family

• 12 weeks paid maternity leave
• 4 weeks paid spouse leave
• $20k towards family planning: fertility, surrogacy, adoption
• Dog friendly workplace

Space for Your Career

• $10k/year towards trade school or college
• $2k/year for professional development
• Ongoing coaching to advance leadership skills

Space for Your Future

• Employee-ownership with stock bonuses
• 4% Safe Harbor 401(k) matching
• Financial planning resources
• $10k bonus for home purchase in Cedar Park, Texas

Job Openings

From launch technicians to propulsion engineers, Firefly has open roles across the company. We’re looking for passionate, bright innovators to join our team and help make space an achievable dream for everyone.

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ABOUT

Firefly Aerospace is a space and defense technology company on a mission to reliably and repeatedly launch, land, and operate space systems from Earth to the Moon and beyond. As the partner of choice for critical space missions, Firefly is the first commercial company to launch a satellite to orbit with 24-hour notice and the first company to achieve a successful Moon landing. Headquartered in north Austin, Texas, Firefly is looking for passionate, hardworking innovators to join our team and help fuel our successful trajectory into space.

SUMMARY

Our computer vision system that landed on the moon combines a flexible, multi-camera hardware architecture with onboard perception, navigation, and state estimation. Firefly is seeking a Principle Software Engineer to lead the development of critical features across the stack.

In this role, you will build the systems, libraries, tools, and interfaces that connect perception algorithms with cameras, compute hardware, simulation environments, flight software, and mission operations. You will work at the intersection of modern software engineering, 3D computing, embedded systems, and spacecraft operations to create a reliable, reusable platform capable of supporting missions beyond the laboratory—and beyond Earth.

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in one or more of these areas, an interest in expanding into the others, and an appetite for solving complex problems where software, hardware, and mission requirements meet.

This position may be based onsite at Firefly Aerospace’s facilities in Austin, Texas, or Littleton, Colorado. Fully remote candidates may also be considered, provided they can travel to Austin for approximately one week every other month—up to six weeks annually—to support Assembly, Integration & Test (AI&T) activities and mission operations. Additional travel may occasionally be required based on program needs

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead the design, development, integration, and testing of critical features within
  our software stack
• Build reusable C++ and Python libraries, APIs, tools, and abstractions connecting perception algorithms with cameras, compute hardware, simulation, flight software, and mission operations
• Define maintainable interfaces between algorithmic and platform components across a large, production-quality codebase
• Develop and optimize multithreaded, low-latency software for compute-, memory-, and bandwidth-constrained environments
• Integrate cameras, sensors, heterogeneous compute platforms, and networking interfaces into reliable end-to-end systems
• Develop software involving 3D geometry, coordinate transformations, camera models, spatial data, visualization, simulation, or reconstruction
• Establish automated testing, build infrastructure, simulation tools, and developer workflows that improve reliability and engineering velocity
• Partner with perception, GNC, avionics, flight software, systems engineering, and mission operations teams to ensure cohesive system behavior
• Support software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, spacecraft integration, mission simulation, and flight operations activities
• Diagnose complex system-level issues, contribute to architectural decisions, conduct technical reviews, and mentor other engineers

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, or a related technical field; equivalent practical experience may be considered
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience developing complex production systems
• Strong proficiency in modern C++, including multithreading, memory management, debugging, and performance optimization
• Experience designing reusable libraries, APIs, platform services, or software abstractions used across engineering teams
• Experience developing and debugging software in Linux environments and integrating software with hardware, sensors, networking interfaces, or external systems
• Strong understanding of software architecture, algorithms, automated testing, and maintainable software design
• Demonstrated ability to resolve complex system-level issues and communicate effectively across software, algorithm, hardware, and systems engineering teams

Preferred

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
• Experience developing software for spacecraft, aerospace, robotics, autonomous vehicles, defense systems, or other mission-critical applications
• Proficiency in Python for tooling, automation, testing, simulation, or data analysis
• Experience with 3D geometry, coordinate transformations, camera models, spatial data structures, visualization, simulation, or reconstruction
• Experience integrating cameras or perception sensors with embedded Linux, GPUs, FPGAs, or other heterogeneous compute platforms
• Familiarity with computer vision, visual navigation, state estimation, localization, mapping, or perception pipelines
• Experience with flight software interfaces, telemetry and commanding, software- or hardware-in-the-loop testing, vehicle integration, or mission operations

Firefly offers outstanding benefits for our employees, including generous health, dental and vision plans with low plan deductibles, parental leave, educational reimbursement, short term disability, and flexible PTO options.
To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
Firefly Aerospace, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Firefly is governed based on merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status