Software Engineer - Neutron Flight Safety Systems

Description

The company builds rockets, spacecraft and critical subsystems for missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

The company's new medium-lift reusable launch vehicle is still in development. The flight safety systems team builds its on-board system, which tracks flight progress and ends the flight if safety criteria are not met.

This is a mid-level role in Auckland, New Zealand, on a small, focused team. You will follow established development plans and coding standards, while senior engineers review your work and help you gain certification and safety-critical experience.

Responsibilities

• Write flight code for the autonomous flight termination system, which connects to navigation systems, tracks and predicts vehicle state, and triggers termination when needed, following the documented plans and standards.
• Build services, tools and interfaces that support development, testing, simulation and operations.
• Write unit tests for flight safety software, plus support code for building, deploying, testing, simulating, analysing data and running operations.
• Help write software requirements, architecture, design and algorithms, and record their assumptions and dependencies.
• Keep traceability between requirements, design, implementation and verification.
• Document interfaces between the flight safety software, the hardware beneath it and connected equipment.
• Join internal and external software reviews, and write technical reports for internal and external stakeholders.
• Take part in formal and informal testing, analysis and reporting.
• Help identify, record and reduce flight safety risks, and support system safety assessments.
• Automate tests, and help integrate the flight safety system into integrated testing, launch vehicle work and launch operations.
• Support the flight safety system during integrated tests and flight operations.
• Learn and apply relevant regulatory standards, working with internal safety, reliability, quality and licensing teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's in software engineering, computer science, or equivalent demonstrated knowledge.
• 3+ years of software development experience.
• Proficient in C++ for embedded systems development.
• Proficient in Python for test and simulation support.
• Exposure to safety-critical software or regulated development, such as medical devices, avionics, rail signalling, automotive functional safety, industrial safety, nuclear or defence.
• Experience with deployment and CI tooling.
• Proficient in Git and issue trackers.
• Detail-oriented, with a strong commitment to engineering rigour, documentation and evidence. Code that compiles and runs is not enough.
• Clear communicator who can explain technical decisions to engineers and non-engineers alike.
• Able to work under pressure and to tight deadlines.
• Nice to have: experience with space launch vehicle flight safety systems, such as RCC-319.
• Nice to have: experience with a recognised safety or software assurance standard, such as DO-178, IEC 62304, ISO 26262, IEC 61508 or EN 50128.
• Nice to have: requirements-driven design and requirements traceability.
• Nice to have: Linux development environments.
• Nice to have: build tools such as CMake or Bazel.
• Nice to have: real-time operating systems or bare-metal development.
• Nice to have: MISRA or similar coding standards, and static analysis tooling.
• Nice to have: hardware-in-the-loop testing and hands-on work with flight hardware.
• Nice to have: serial and network protocols such as CAN, RS485/422/232, Ethernet and SpaceWire.
• Nice to have: liaising with regulators, certification bodies, or independent verification and validation organisations.
• Nice to have: knowledge of spacecraft, launch vehicles, or similarly complex autonomous systems.
• Nice to have: test procedure or data review, quality reporting, and Jira.

Conditions

Based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Domestic and international travel may be required.

Background checks, including nationality checks, are carried out before any job offer. The role requires eligibility to access equipment and data regulated by the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Under these rules, you may be ineligible if you are not a citizen of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, the European Union or a NATO member country, or if you hold ineligible dual citizenship or nationality.

For US office roles: under ITAR you must be a US citizen, a lawful permanent resident, a lawfully admitted refugee or asylee, or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the US State Department and/or Commerce Department, as applicable.