Software Engineer - Flight, Embedded

About EON

EON is building the highest-throughput point-to-point data transport network ever deployed in space. Using free-space laser links in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), we move petabytes of data between any two points on Earth as an alternative to subsea or terrestrial fiber. EON recently closed a $10.75M seed financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst in their first-ever co-led space deal. EON is building out of its R&D center in Culver City.

Today, approximately 95% of the global internet travels through a few hundred subsea fiber-optic cables, infrastructure designed in the early 2000s that has gone largely unchanged. Demand for new fiber has never been higher, but laying it is extraordinarily difficult: permits, ocean geology, and geopolitical boundaries make every new cable a years-long, billion-dollar undertaking. That bottleneck is a liability with cables at constant risk of being cut, whether by accident or adversarial action, and no amount of ground-based investment can fully solve it.

The Role

Our optical payload and ground terminal run on embedded software: board-level firmware, the payload application layer, and the real-time code that closes control loops. We are seeking a software engineer to own the flight and embedded stack, from drivers and bring-up support on new boards through commanding, telemetry, and fault management on the payload. You'll partner with the GNC and Lasercom PAT seats, whose control designs you carry into real-time code, and work alongside the EE seats bringing up the hardware your software runs on.

Responsibilities

• Develop embedded firmware in C/C++ for the terminal and payload electronics: drivers, board support, and deterministic real-time execution on microcontrollers and SoCs

• Build the payload application layer: commanding, telemetry, fault detection and management, and the software interface to the bus

• Implement control loops in real-time code, carrying designs from the GNC and Lasercom PAT seats into terminal and flight software

• Support board bring-up with the EE seats, writing the low-level drivers (I2C, SPI, UART, Ethernet) that make new hardware usable

• Instrument everything for observability: logging, telemetry, and diagnostics that serve integration, test, and operations

• Stand up the embedded toolchain: build systems, version control, CI, and hardware-in-the-loop test as the stack matures toward flight

• Define the path from demonstrator software to flight rigor: fault handling, safing behavior, and update mechanisms

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or advanced degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, or a related discipline

• Embedded development depth in C or C++, spanning bare-metal and RTOS environments

• Hands-on hardware bring-up experience, debugging across software and hardware with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and JTAG

• Low-level peripheral and driver experience (I2C, SPI, UART, ADC, Ethernet)

• Python for tooling, test automation, and data analysis

• Comfort moving fast and making sound calls without complete data

Preferred Experience

• Flight software experience: cFS, F Prime, CCSDS protocols, or similar frameworks

• Real-time control loop implementation alongside controls or GNC engineers

• FPGA SoC platforms (Zynq or similar), including the gateware-to-software interface

• Fault management and FDIR design for spacecraft or high-reliability systems

• Hardware-in-the-loop test infrastructure

• Telemetry pipelines and ground-interface protocols

• Reliability-aware software practice for radiation or safety-critical environments

A note on level and background: We hire this role at all levels, from Associate through Senior and Principal Software Engineer, and calibrate title, scope, and compensation to your experience. If this list doesn't perfectly match your background still reach out. We are always looking for exceptional people from many disciplines.

What this job is really like

We're a seed-stage company building toward first light on a single-route demonstrator. There's no program office and no requirements team. Your code is the first thing to run on every new board and the last thing standing between an anomaly and a lost pass, and you'll spend real time at the bench next to the hardware it drives. If you do your best work inside a large, well-resourced program, this isn't it. If you want your fingerprints on a Tbps-class link from the start, this is it.

Compensation + Benefits

In addition to base salary (to be determined on a case by case basis), compensation for this role includes:

• EON believes the business should be primarily employee owned. In turn, all compensation offers include company stock options for FTEs.

• Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental insurance with significant cost covered by the company for yourself and dependents.

• Paid parental leave and flexible PTO (3 weeks accrued vacation and 10 company holidays per year).

• Relocation assistance to Los Angeles available.

• A real equipment and lab budget.

Location: Culver City, CA (onsite).

Endeavor Optical Network is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with EON is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.