Senior Flight Software Engineer

About Electra:

At Electra, we're pioneering sustainable aviation by developing hybrid-electric Ultra Short Takeoff and Landing aircraft designed to transform regional air mobility, by making air travel more efficient, quieter, and environmentally friendly. Able to operate from soccer field-sized spaces, our Ultra Short unlocks a new era of aviation through what we call Direct Aviation - the next level of connectivity bringing air travel closer to where we live, work, and play. Headquartered in Northern Virginia, with additional locations in Switzerland, we're building a diverse team of global professionals passionate about redefining the future of aviation.

Position Overview:

Electra is seeking a Senior Flight Software Engineerwho is highly flexible, forward-thinking, and willing to go the extra mile to achieve team goals. Electra.aero offers great employee benefits and competitive wages. The position will be located in Manassas, VA. 

Key Responsibilities and Essential Functions:

• Design, develop, and maintain Aerospace Certifiable, flight-critical embedded software for Electra's Ultra Short takeoff and landing aircraft systems, ensuring performance, safety, and reliability.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with avionics, systems, and hardware engineering teams to define software requirements, interfaces, and integration strategies.
• Implement and optimize communication protocols for aircraft subsystems and onboard networks.
• Decompose high level requirements into low level requirements, documentation and source code.
• Write clean, well-documented, and maintainable code that meets internal and external DO-178C/MISRA standards for readable, verifiable, testable, traceable, and safety-critical code.
• Support Unit Level Tests for Low Level Requirements verification and validation.
• Support Integration Level Tests for High Level Requirements verification and validation.
• Support simulation, analysis, and validation efforts through MATLAB scripting, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), and software-in-the-loop (SIL) testing.
• Contribute to continuous improvement of development workflows, build systems, and testing frameworks in a Linux-based environment.
• Collaborate in the software development and certification process, including code reviews and technical discussions to ensure compliance, robustness and consistency across flight software modules.
• Stay current with emerging technologies in embedded systems, avionics software, and aerospace standards to help shape Electra's next-generation flight systems.

Required Education and Experience:

Minimum of 5+ year of experience in software development with Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or related area.

Required Qualifications:

• Pragmatic, entrepreneurial mindset with a can-do attitude

• Focus on clean, easy to read, well documented, safety critical code
• Organized with a strong attention to detail
• Uncompromising when it comes to the safety of our pilots and customers

• Able to decompose high level requirements into low level requirements, documentation and code
• Experience with the DO-178C certification process

• Proven experience with C

• Working knowledge of Linux, compiling, build systems

• Experience with MATLAB scripting

Desired Qualifications:

• Java, Python, and/or Javascript 
• Experience with CAN, Serial, Ethernet communications 
• Troubleshooting embedded systems, scoping, bus sniffing, etc.

• Experience with Software Verification and Validation including Unit Level Testing
• Experience with ARM and STM32 platforms

• Experience with UART, SPI, I2C, SPI

• Experience with UX/GUI design using web frameworks like node.js

• Experience with electronics, embedded systems and/or or avionics integration and testing 
• Firsthand experience with DO-178C Documentation and SOI Audits

Location & Additional Information:

Location: Headquarters in Manassas, VA. To encourage close collaboration, this position is 4-5 days in the office, with some virtual work allowed.

Travel: Occasional travel (