Flight Software Architect

Here at The Exploration Company, we are building spacecrafts for humanity.

The Flight Software Architect plays a key role in defining and maintaining the software architecture for our spacecraft flight software. The role ensures that the flight software architecture meets mission needs, system-level requirements, and safety and reliability objectives, while remaining scalable, maintainable, and suitable for the evolving needs of our spacecraft platforms. Working closely with Flight Software, Systems Engineering, Avionics, GNC, Mission Operations, and other functional disciplines, the Flight Software Architect drives architectural decisions, technical consistency, and the integration of software across the spacecraft.

Key Responsibilities

In your capacity as Flight Software Architect, your role will be continuously evolving, but day to day your duties will include:

What we would love to see from you

1. Software architecture & design — Define, develop, and maintain the overall flight software architecture, including software components, interfaces, data flows, and execution models, ensuring alignment with spacecraft system architecture and mission objectives.

2. Technical leadership & architectural decisions — Drive key architectural decisions and establish design principles, technical standards, and best practices for flight software development. Provide technical guidance to software engineers and ensure consistency across software components and development activities.

3. System integration & interfaces — Define and coordinate software interfaces with avionics, onboard computers, sensors, actuators, GNC, communication systems, and other spacecraft subsystems. Ensure robust integration across functional disciplines and support the resolution of cross-system technical challenges.

4. Requirements & traceability — Translate mission and system-level requirements into software architectural requirements, design constraints, and interface specifications. Ensure traceability between requirements, architecture, implementation, and verification, working closely with Systems Engineering and functional chain owners.

5. Reliability, safety & performance — Ensure that architectural decisions address fault tolerance, robustness, timing constraints, resource utilization, failure detection and recovery, and overall spacecraft reliability. Contribute to safety analyses, failure management strategies, and the definition of appropriate software verification and validation approaches.

6. Verification, validation & technical risk management — Identify and mitigate architectural risks, assess technical trade-offs, and support design reviews, integration campaigns, and verification activities. Ensure that the architecture is validated against mission requirements and that critical technical assumptions are verified early in the development lifecycle.

7. Cross-functional collaboration & technical communication — Act as a technical reference for flight software architecture, facilitating alignment between Flight Software, Systems Engineering, Avionics, GNC, Mission Operations, and external partners, including ESA where applicable. Communicate architectural decisions, constraints, and trade-offs clearly to both technical teams and project stakeholders.

In the role of Flight Software Architect, ideally, you will have the following:

• 10–15 years of professional experience in software engineering, including substantial experience in flight software, embedded software, or safety- and mission-critical systems.

• Proven experience defining and evolving software architectures for complex critical software systems, ideally for spacecraft, launch vehicles, satellites, or other aerospace applications.

• Strong knowledge of real-time embedded software, operating systems, hardware–software interfaces, resource-constrained computing, and distributed or fault-tolerant systems.

• Experience translating system-level requirements into software architectures, interface specifications, and verification strategies.

• A solid understanding of software integration, testing, verification and validation, and configuration and change management in a complex engineering environment.

• Experience with architectural trade-off analysis, technical risk management, and making sound engineering decisions under performance, reliability, schedule, and resource constraints.

• The ability to work effectively across multiple engineering disciplines and align stakeholders around clear technical solutions.

• Strong structured thinking, analytical skills, and the ability to simplify complex technical challenges into robust and maintainable architectures.

• Excellent technical communication skills, with the ability to explain architectural decisions, document design rationale, and provide technical guidance to multidisciplinary teams.

• A strong ownership mindset, a pragmatic approach to problem-solving, and a passion for developing reliable software that enables humanity’s exploration of space.

Why you should join us!

What makes us special here at The Exploration Company and why we think you will enjoy working here is:  

• We’re Agile - we make decisions fast whilst keeping our goals and systems in mind 

• We’re Open and Collaborative - we are transparent about risks and obstacles, so that we can cooperate to overcome them  

• We have a lot of Fun - we refuel our energy knowing we are democratising space. It’s a wonderful and rare opportunity, are YOU up for the challenge?  

We'd love to hear from you if you wish to be a part of our journey. Please submit your CV now for immediate consideration and we will be in touch shortly. 
 
The Exploration Company is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability status. Relocation assistance is provided for those willing to relocate including visa sponsorship where applicable.  

All offers are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check, which will be subject to the country, role, and project you applied for. By submitting your application, you acknowledge and agree that any offer of employment may be conditional upon successful condition of this check. The Exploration Company partners with Zinc Work Limited located in the UK (Zinc), a third-party provider, to ensure this process as efficient and transparent as possible.
If applicable, you will receive an email from Zinc upon acceptance of your offer with a link to a secure portal where you can provide the required information to Zinc.