{"id":3785564,"url":"https://alion.io/job/firefly-aerospace-principal-firmware-engineer","title":"Principal Firmware Engineer","company":{"id":63753,"name":"Firefly Aerospace","domain":"fireflyspace.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/firefly-aerospace-com","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":null},"role":"Hardware","role_family":"Hardware","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Cedar Park, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":true,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"FreeRTOS","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RTOS","optional":false},{"name":"Verification & Validation","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-04T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-04","last_verified_at":"2026-11-09T23:30:57Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":6,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":6},"description":"ABOUT FIREFLY AEROSPACE\nFirefly Aerospace is a space and defense technology company that enables our world to launch, land, and operate in space - anywhere, anytime. As the partner of choice for critical space missions, Firefly is the only commercial company to launch a satellite to orbit with 24-hour notice and the only company to achieve a successful Moon landing. Our launch vehicles, lunar landers, and orbital vehicles provide government and commercial customers with full mission services from low Earth orbit to the Moon and beyond. Headquartered in north Austin, Texas, Firefly is looking for passionate, hardworking innovators to join our team and help fuel our successful trajectory into space.\nSummary\nAs a Principal Firmware Engineer, you will serve as a senior technical authority and hands-on contributor shaping the firmware that powers Firefly’s launch vehicles, spacecraft, and ground systems. You will own complex firmware architectures, drive technical decisions across multiple programs, and mentor engineers while remaining deeply involved in design, implementation, and debugging.\nThis role demands deep expertise in embedded firmware, strong system-level thinking, and the ability to influence technical direction across hardware, software, and systems teams. You will tackle the most challenging firmware problems, establish best practices, and help ensure the reliability and performance required for spaceflight. Candidates should be prepared for a fast-paced startup environment that rewards technical ownership, creativity, and collaboration.\nResponsibilities\nTechnical Authority & Architecture: Define and own firmware architectures for critical avionics systems. Make key technical decisions on design approach, interfaces, and trade-offs that balance performance, reliability, schedule, and risk.\nHands-on Development: Design, implement, and debug complex firmware in C/C++ for embedded targets. Contribute directly to drivers, bootloaders, board support packages, real-time control loops, and hardware abstraction layers.\nTechnical Leadership & Mentorship: Provide technical guidance and mentoring to firmware and embedded software engineers. Lead design reviews, establish coding and verification standards, and raise the technical capability of the team.\nSystem Integration & Collaboration: Work closely with hardware, FPGA, GNC, systems, and software engineers to ensure seamless integration of firmware with sensors, actuators, processors, and higher-level software.\nReliability & Process: Drive best practices for high-reliability firmware development, including verification, fault handling, configuration management, and flight-worthiness considerations. Help refine team processes for design, analysis, test, and V&V.\n\nQualifications\nRequired\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.\nMinimum 10+ years of embedded firmware or embedded software development experience.\nStrong proficiency in C (and preferably C++) on bare-metal, RTOS, and/or embedded Linux targets.\nDeep experience with microcontrollers, ARM architectures, and low-level hardware interfaces (SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, Ethernet, etc.).\nHands-on lab experience bringing up and debugging firmware on embedded hardware.\nDemonstrated ability to architect complex firmware systems and mentor other engineers.\nExcellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to explain technical trade-offs to both engineers and non-engineers.\nAbility to thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced environment with evolving requirements.\nDesired\nMaster’s degree in a related field.\nExperience with real-time operating systems (FreeRTOS, VxWorks, or similar) and/or embedded Linux.\nFamiliarity with high-reliability or safety-critical firmware development practices.\nExperience with SoC platforms, bootloaders, and board support packages.\nExposure to radiation effects, fault tolerance, or space-qualified systems.\nExperience integrating firmware with FPGAs or custom ASICs.\nComfortable with scripts, build systems, and command-line tools (Python, bash, etc.).\nPrior experience in aerospace, space systems, defense, or other high-reliability domains.\nFirefly offers outstanding benefits for our employees, including generous health, dental and vision plans with low plan deductibles, parental leave, relocation benefits, educational reimbursement, short term disability, and flexible PTO options.\nTo 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.\nFirefly 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5202,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Space & Aerospace"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-05T03:21:35Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":80,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.885,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":5,"expected_fill_days":8,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:mid","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-09T06:03:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/firefly-aerospace-principal-firmware-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/firefly-aerospace-principal-firmware-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-10T04:13:45Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9888,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-11T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":63753},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=63753"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ffirefly-aerospace-principal-firmware-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ffirefly-aerospace-principal-firmware-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ffirefly-aerospace-principal-firmware-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/firefly-aerospace-principal-firmware-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ffirefly-aerospace-principal-firmware-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3785564}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"fireflyspace.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3785564},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); 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