Shield Mission Systems Software Engineer develops real-time mission computing software architecture for autonomous aircraft. This role integrates hardware, software, and systems teams to design, test, and field mission-critical systems.
Responsibilities
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.
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.
Qualification
SeniorStaffSenior StaffExperience developing embeddedProficiency in CExperience with A-GRAExperience integrating autonomyFamiliarity with airworthinessExperience with CPU-Experience with HIL/SIL environments
Required
Senior: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 5+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 1+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
Staff: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 8+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 3+ years in software architecture, systems architecture, or technical leadership.
Senior Staff: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 10+ years of professional software-engineering experience, including 5+ 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.
Preferred
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.
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.
