Senior Mission Systems Software Engineer (C2)

About The Company

We are a stealth-mode Aerospace & Defense startup headquartered in Gardena, CA. Our founding team hails from SpaceX, Anduril, and Lockheed Martin, and we are backed by Joint Staff-level military leadership and several Silicon Valley firms. With a world-class business development & leadership team already in place, we are well positioned to capitalize on already overwhelming demand.

Role Summary:

The Senior Mission Systems Engineer is responsible for designing, developing, testing, and maintaining high-performance mission-critical software that supports fire control, flight, ground, and command-and-control systems. This role focuses on building robust, secure, and reliable modern C++ applications for Linux-based embedded and edge computing platforms while integrating with sensors, hardware, and distributed networked systems.

The ideal candidate possesses deep expertise in modern C++, Linux, networking, and systems engineering, with the ability to troubleshoot complex issues spanning software, hardware, networking, and deployment environments. Success in this role requires close collaboration with cross-functional engineering teams-including mechanical, electrical, guidance, navigation and control (GNC), and operations-to deliver reliable mission capabilities from development through field integration.

Candidates should have strong computer science fundamentals, experience with embedded and distributed systems, and a security-first approach to software design and implementation. Experience with robotics, command-and-control systems, fire control, flight software, cybersecurity, applied mathematics, and modern software architectures is highly desirable. The role also includes occasional travel (up to 20%) to support customer demonstrations, system integration, and field testing

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, test, and maintain high-quality modern C++ software for mission systems.
• Contribute to fire control, ground systems, and flight software efforts.
• Refactor and improve existing software architecture, reliability, maintainability, and testability.
• Work with linux-based systems deployed on embedded and edge compute platforms.
• Interface with hardware-adjacent systems, sensors, and embedded compute.
• Build software that communicate over real-world networks, including unreliable or constrained data links.
• Debug complex system-level issues across software, hardware, networking, and deployment environments.
• Collaborate with mechanical, electrical, software, GNC, and operations teams towards a common goal.
• Support occasional field testing, integration events, and customer demonstrations.
• Apply a security-oriented mindset to system design, implementation, deployment, and debugging.
• Travel up to 20% of the time for on-site integration events with external vendors or customers.

Required Qualifications:

• Strong Modern C++ (23) experience or demonstrable ability to write high-quality C++
• Strong CS fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, concurrency, memory management, networking, and debugging
• Linux experience: Linux development, debugging, deployment, operation, maintenance
• Networking experience: TCP/UDP, routing, multicast, DNS, DDS, pub/sub, Ethernet, etc
• Understanding of hardware-adjacent software: communication protocols, sensors, etc
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance
• Willingness to travel for up to 20% of the job

Preferred Qualifications:

• C++23/C++23 experience
• Robotics experience (ROS/ROS2, control algorithms, path planning, etc)
• C2 (Command and Control) software experience
• Fire control systems (FCS) software experience
• Flight software (FSW) software experience
• Nix/NixOS experience
• Cybersecurity mindset: defense in depth, secure-by-default design, threat modeling, CTF/security background, crypto familiarity, hardening experience
• Applied math background: linear algebra, optimization, estimation, controls, simulation, numerical methods, etc
• Basic API/web literacy: REST, gRPC, protobuf, frontend/backend concepts, databases, etc

ITAR

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.