{"id":1499157,"url":"https://alion.io/job/red-cat-holdings-senior-software-engineer","title":"Senior Software Engineer","company":{"id":176597,"name":"Red Cat Holdings","domain":"redcat.red","url":"https://alion.io/company/red-cat-holdings","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Paycom","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Torrance, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":128000,"max_usd":234000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":3030},"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Conan","optional":false},{"name":"Cortex","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA Toolkit","optional":false},{"name":"Digital Twin","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"DroneCAN","optional":false},{"name":"Embedded C","optional":false},{"name":"GitLab CI","optional":false},{"name":"JFrog Artifactory","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"MAVLink","optional":false},{"name":"ONNX Runtime","optional":false},{"name":"OpenCV","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Qt","optional":false},{"name":"RTOS","optional":false},{"name":"Sensor Fusion","optional":false},{"name":"SLAM","optional":false},{"name":"TensorRT","optional":false},{"name":"C","optional":true},{"name":"Prometheus","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-30T03:23:57Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-30","last_verified_at":"2026-10-14T07:09:44Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":14,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":14},"description":"Position Summary\nFlightWave is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to develop embedded and perception software for autonomous aircraft and uncrewed aerial systems. This engineer will own production software across microcontrollers and Linux-based application processors, integrate sensors and perception capabilities, and support systems from architecture and hardware bring-up through flight test.\nThe ideal candidate brings recent VTOL, UAS, or other vehicle embedded-software experience; deep expertise in real-time and embedded Linux systems; Perception stack development and the judgment to diagnose issues spanning software, electronics, sensors, networks, and vehicle behavior. The role partners with electrical, systems, controls, autonomy, test, manufacturing, and flight-operations teams.\nEssential Duties and Responsibilities\nEssential functions of a job that are crucial to its purpose and must be performed regularly. They are the fundamental tasks that an employee must be able to carry out, with or without reasonable accommodation, and are central to defining the role’s purpose.\nDesign, implement, review, and maintain embedded software in C and C++ for microcontrollers, application processors, and heterogeneous edge-compute platforms used on aircraft.\n\nOwn software features through requirements, architecture, implementation, integration, verification, release, and support during ground and flight testing.\n\nIntegrate cameras, EO or IR payloads, IMUs, GNSS receivers, radar, lidar, and other sensors; establish reliable data paths, time synchronization, health monitoring, and fault handling.\n\nDevelop or integrate perception capabilities such as detection, tracking, localization, visual odometry, mapping, calibration, and multi-sensor fusion according to program needs.\n\nOptimize CPU, GPU, memory, I/O, startup time, latency, throughput, and power use while preserving deterministic behavior on safety- and mission-critical paths.\n\nDefine secure, stable interfaces across perception, autonomy, flight controls, vehicle management, communications, payloads, and operator-facing applications.\n\nDiagnose complex problems using target debuggers, traces, logic analyzers, telemetry, recorded sensor data, core dumps, and system logs.\n\nBuild automated unit, integration, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, regression, and performance tests; analyze flight data and drive defects to root cause.\n\nDevelop digital twins and simulators/emulators.\n\nContribute to requirements traceability, design reviews, coding standards, configuration management, risk analysis, and evidence needed for program assurance or certification.\n\nProvide technical leadership through architecture decisions, code reviews, mentoring, planning, and coordination with electrical, systems, controls, autonomy, test, manufacturing, and flight-operations teams.\n\nRequired Qualifications - The following qualifications are required for any position:\nBachelor’s/Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.\n\nSeven or more years of professional software development experience, including demonstrable hands-on development of embedded software for aircraft, autonomous vehicles, automotive systems, robotics, or similarly complex vehicle platforms.\n\nAdvanced proficiency in embedded C and modern C++, including object lifetime, ownership, concurrency, integer behavior, memory layout, performance, and debugging without relying on undefined behavior.\n\nProduction experience on both microcontrollers and application processors, such as ARM Cortex-M and Cortex-A class devices or comparable architectures.\n\nExperience with an RTOS and embedded Linux, including multithreading, interprocess communication, scheduling, boot flow, device interfaces, and system-level troubleshooting.\n\nExperience with common vehicle and board interfaces such as DroneCAN or CAN FD, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, UART, GPIO, MavLINK and related transport or messaging protocols.\n\nExperience integrating real sensors or perception data on a resource-constrained platform, with attention to calibration, timing, dropped data, vibration, lighting, latency, and environmental failure modes.\n\nExperience taking software from design and hardware bring-up through bench testing, vehicle integration, and field or flight testing.\n\nDemonstrated ability to create testable interfaces, automated tests, actionable logs, and measurable performance or reliability criteria.\n\nAbility to communicate technical decisions clearly, lead reviews, mentor engineers, and work effectively with multidisciplinary teams.\n\nAbility to meet the on-site, travel, work-authorization, and program-access requirements stated in this posting.\n\nAdditional Desired Qualifications - The requirements below are desired knowledge, skills and/or abilities we desire but not required.\nDirect experience with UAV aircraft, UAS platforms, autopilots, flight computers, or flight-control ecosystems such as PX4 or an equivalent platform.\n\nExperience developing or deploying perception for aerial vehicles, including sensor fusion, visual-inertial odometry, SLAM, GNSS-denied navigation, object detection, tracking, or terrain-relative localization.\n\nExperience developing vision-based guidance capabilities for autonomous aircraft, including visual target localization, camera-to-vehicle coordinate transforms, line-of-sight or target-state estimation, and interfaces to guidance, navigation, and control software.\n\nExperience with object detection, recognition or classification, and multi-object tracking in optical (visible-light) and infrared imagery, including moving-camera compensation, track association, occlusion, and changing illumination or thermal contrast.\n\nExperience fusing optical or infrared observations with radar detections or tracks, including sensor calibration, time synchronization, coordinate-frame alignment, state estimation, and uncertainty-aware association.\n\nExperience evaluating perception and tracking performance on recorded and flight-test data, including detection and false-alarm rates, track continuity, latency, and failure modes caused by clutter, weather, range, or sensor degradation.\n\nExperience optimizing computer-vision or machine-learning workloads for embedded or edge deployment using OpenCV, Eigen, CUDA, TensorRT, ONNX Runtime, or comparable technologies.\n\nHands-on development with NXP, Qualcomm, or NVIDIA processors and their associated board-support packages, acceleration frameworks, profiling tools, and development kits.\n\nExperience with the Yocto Project, OpenEmbedded, Buildroot, custom Linux distributions, bootloaders, kernel configuration, or device drivers.\n\nExperience building operator or engineering applications with Qt and QML.\n\nExperience with Docker-based development or deployment workflows and cross-compilation for target hardware.\n\nExperience managing C or C++ dependencies with Conan and binary artifacts with JFrog Artifactory.\n\nExperience with Python for test automation, data analysis, tooling, model development, or system integration.\n\nExperience with GitLab CI/CD or a comparable automated build, test, packaging, static-analysis, and release pipeline.\n\nFamiliarity with airborne or safety-related development practices and requirements-based testing, structural coverage, or tool qualification.\n\nExperience with secure boot, signed updates, trusted execution, platform hardening, or cybersecurity practices for connected embedded systems.\n\nExperience applying agentic development tools or workflows to coding, testing, documentation, or log analysis while maintaining security, traceability, review, and human accountability.\n\nPhysical Requirements and Working Conditions - The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee successfully perform the essential functions of this job.\nWork with prototype and production hardware in laboratory, engineeirng, manufacturing, and flight-test environments.\nTravel to integration and flight-test sites as program schedules require. Up to 10%.\nParticipate in scheduled test events or issue-response activities outside standard hours when necessary, with company-specific expectations defined before hire.\nComply with applicable safety, security, export-control, information-handling, and facility-access procedures.\nBackground Check\nThis position will require successfully completing a post-offer background check. Qualified candidates with a criminal history will be considered and are not automatically disqualified, consistent with federal and state law.\nEEO and ITAR/EAR Work Authorization Disclosure\nRed Cat Holdings provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identification or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.\nThis position requires direct or indirect access to hardware software, technology or technical data controlled under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Successful candidates for positions subject to ITAR/EAR restrictions must provide proof of U.S. Citizenship or Permanent Residence and must not require sponsorship for export-restricted work authorization.\nE-Verify\nThe company participates E-Verify ensure eligibility for employment and compliance with Right to Work rules.\nCompensation: Salary range: 132K - 183K plus equity and possible bonuses","description_format":"text","description_chars":9750,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":7,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Military","Robotics","Drones & UAVs","Military Drones"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-30T03:23:57Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":47,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.851,"p_room":0.55,"age_days":14,"expected_fill_days":10,"reasons":["conf:4","velocity","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/red-cat-holdings-senior-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/red-cat-holdings-senior-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-14T07:38:04Z","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":8758,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-15T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"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":176597},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=176597"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fred-cat-holdings-senior-software-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"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%2Fred-cat-holdings-senior-software-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"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%2Fred-cat-holdings-senior-software-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/red-cat-holdings-senior-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fred-cat-holdings-senior-software-engineer"}]}