Mission Systems Software Engineer - BlueSky (R5199)

The Mission Systems Software Engineer will work on developing solutions of a real time system environment to provide mission computing support at the center of an autonomous aircraft with sensor and weapons. This role will work to establish a software architecture for a real time system that operates in a multi-level environment at real time. The role will require work with hardware, software and systems teams to come to a consensus design. This role will focus on development of new systems and software designs from PDR, CoDR, CDR to lab test, flight test and fielding. 

What you'll do:

• Serve as a software mission systems engineer for a safety- and mission-critical real-time mission-computing system aligned with A-GRA and AMS-GRA principles, profiles, interfaces, and data standards. 

• Define and maintain the end-to-end software architecture, including mission applications, platform services, middleware, operating-system interfaces, hardware-abstraction layers, networking, data distribution, component boundaries, and APIs. 

• Architect for deterministic real-time performance by addressing scheduling, latency, jitter, synchronization, throughput, resource utilization, distributed processing, and CPU/GPU/accelerator allocation. 

• Develop architecture views, interface definitions, data-flow and deployment models, sequence and timing diagrams, resource budgets, trade studies, and technical decision records. 

• Integrate sensors, effectors, communications, navigation, autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, data-processing, and vehicle services in collaboration with hardware, FPGA, cybersecurity, safety, systems, integration, and test teams. 

• Design for mission resilience and assurance through fault detection and isolation, redundancy, graceful degradation, recovery, health monitoring, cybersecurity, airworthiness, certification, and requirements traceability. 

• Establish engineering practices for concurrency, synchronization, memory and resource management, deterministic execution, interface control, configuration management, and predictable component integration. 

• Define and execute verification strategies across HIL/SIL laboratories, simulations, test benches, flight-test environments, and deployed systems using automated, performance, stress, fault-injection, interface, and timing tests. 

• Maintain technical ownership throughout the system lifecycle by evaluating enabling technologies and supplier designs, analyzing performance, managing technical debt and modernization roadmaps, promoting reuse, and communicating architectural decisions. 

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field. 

• 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership. 

• Experience developing embedded, distributed, real-time, safety-critical, or mission-critical software systems. 

• Proficiency in C, C++, Rust, or another strongly typed systems-programming language. 

• Strong understanding of real-time software principles, including scheduling, concurrency, synchronization, latency, jitter, memory management, and deterministic execution. 

• Experience with embedded operating systems or RTOSs, middleware, interprocess communication, networking, and data-distribution technologies. 

• Experience defining software architectures, APIs, interface-control documents, data flows, deployment models, and system resource budgets. 

• Experience integrating software with hardware, sensors, communications systems, navigation systems, effectors, or other mission-system components. 

• Experience supporting software through requirements development, design reviews, implementation, integration, verification, system test, and deployment. 

• Working knowledge of systems-engineering processes, requirements management, traceability, configuration management, and verification and validation. 

• Ability to analyze system performance using instrumentation, telemetry, traces, profiling, network captures, timing data, and resource-utilization measurements. 

• Strong cross-functional technical leadership, problem-solving, written communication, and presentation skills. 

• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense security clearance; U.S. citizenship may be required for clearance eligibility. 

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience developing software for autonomous aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, avionics, mission computers, robotics, or aerospace and defense platforms. 

• Experience with A-GRA, AMS-GRA, OMS, UCI, FACE, or other government reference architectures and open-mission-system standards. 

• Experience integrating autonomy, mission management, command-and-control, sensor processing, communications, navigation, and effector capabilities. 

• Familiarity with airworthiness, safety-assurance, or certification standards such as DO-178C, DO-254, ARP4754A, or applicable military airworthiness guidance. 

• Experience with CPU-, GPU-, FPGA-, or accelerator-based heterogeneous computing architectures. 

• Experience with publish/subscribe middleware, quality-of-service controls, high-rate data distribution, precision timing, and distributed time synchronization. 

• Experience designing cybersecurity controls for embedded or mission systems, including trust boundaries, least privilege, authentication, authorization, secure communications, and software integrity. 

• Experience with HIL/SIL environments, simulation systems, laboratory integration, flight testing, or operational deployment. 

• Experience evaluating supplier designs, RTOSs, middleware, computing platforms, or third-party software for architectural compliance and integration readiness. 

• Active or previously held U.S. Department of Defense Secret clearance.