# Flight Software Engineer at Cowboy Space

- Company: Cowboy Space
- What the company does: Backed by a16z, Index and NEA.
- Company website: https://www.cowboyspace.com/
- Type: Startups
- Level: Mid level
- Location: Kent, Washington
- Work setup: On-site
- Pay: $200K to $250K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-09-15
- Apply by: 2026-10-30
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cowboyspace/0599e3f2-5178-4135-bbeb-65a5ca70bef6
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/cowboy-space-flight-software-engineer/

## About the role

We're looking for a Senior Flight Software Engineer to own the software that flies on our spacecraft. You'll be responsible for the payload flight software—written in Rust—spanning attitude and pointing state machines, on-board command handling, and telemetry and data storage. Today this work is distributed across several engineers; we need a senior technical owner to unify the architecture, set the patterns and conventions the team builds on, and drive the software toward a near-term on-orbit demonstration.

## What they're looking for

- 5+ years of experience (or equivalent practical experience) developing flight software or software for other high-reliability, safety-critical systems
- Experience with software that has flown on orbit, or equivalent deployment experience demonstrating judgment about what flight-quality software requires
- Strong systems programming skills in Rust, C, or C++, with willingness to work primarily in Rust
- Experience with real-time and embedded systems, including resource-constrained and fault-tolerant designs
- Experience designing and implementing state machines, command/telemetry handling, or similar spacecraft software functions
- Experience with hardware/software integration and testing on real hardware

Tags: Launch & Propulsion Engineering