Director of Embedded Software & FPGA Engineering

Job description

Wanna join the adventure? Loft Orbital is making space simple, giving commercial, defense, and government customers fast, reliable access to orbit through a standardized satellite platform. Our Hub and Cockpit products cut the complexity of traditional satellite missions, reducing time-to-orbit from years to months as we build a growing, heterogeneous fleet in LEO with increasing onboard AI and compute. As Director, Embedded Systems & FPGA Engineering, you will shape the technical foundations that determine how Loft’s hardware, embedded software, onboard software, and operational systems work together. This is an opportunity to define the abstraction layers and engineering interfaces that let teams move faster without sacrificing robustness, reliability, or system understanding. You will help create a platform that can evolve across processors, FPGAs, operating systems, hypervisors, RISC-V, Rust, and future technologies without forcing unnecessary changes through every layer of the stack. You will lead experienced engineers who work at the intersection of hardware, firmware, software, systems, and operations. The role is hands-on in the technical sense: you will not write production code every day, but you should be comfortable going deep into architecture, Linux and build environments, debugging, security boundaries, integration problems, and technical trade-offs alongside the team. About this role: Own the ESW and FPGA roadmap and technical direction across Loft’s satellite platforms. Define HW-abstraction architecture and interfaces across FPGA, embedded software, onboard software, and operational layers. Drive hardware-agnostic and reusable platform capabilities where they improve team independence and allow HW and technology to evolve. Enable the ESW and FPGA leads through clear direction, decision context, coaching, and removal of organizational or technical blockers. Set expectations for architecture, design reviews, code quality, testing, verification, documentation, and operational readiness. Build the core engineering foundation for Linux, Yocto/OpenEmbedded, CI/CD, reproducible builds, and secure or sovereign environments. Guide technology choices involving hypervisors, RISC-V, Rust, and other platform technologies when they create durable value. Act as the face of ESW and FPGA and the triage point for company-wide technical issues, dependencies, and trade-offs. Manage and develop geographically distributed leads and teams, including hiring, mentorship, performance management, and team health. Represent the organization with customers, partners, and government or defense stakeholders when formal assurance and documentation are required. Must Haves: 10+ years of experience in embedded systems, FPGA, firmware, or closely related engineering, including delivery of mission-critical hardware or software. Proven experience leading and managing technical teams, including geographically distributed teams. Deep experience with FPGA design, embedded C/C++, real-time systems, and HW/SW integration. Experience designing HW abstractions and hardware-agnostic interfaces from both technical and architectural perspectives. Strong Linux kernel and embedded Linux experience, including low-level integration, drivers, boot, or system debugging. Strong Yocto/OpenEmbedded and CI/CD experience, including build infrastructure, automated testing, and reproducible releases. Experience building secure and sovereign environments, including trust boundaries, secure boot, signing, controlled dependencies, or related security architecture. Experience with hypervisors, RISC-V, ARM and Rust development environments. Track record of making sound trade-offs across reliability, performance, security, schedule, and technology evolution. Collaborative, solution-minded leadership with the ability to enable leads, manage people with empathy and accountability, and act as a trusted cross-company technical representative. Nice to Haves: Experience with spacecraft avionics, command and data handling (C&DH), payload interfaces, or satellite flight systems. Experience in New Space or satellite manufacturing, particularly standardized, modular, or repeatable satellite platforms. Experience with radiation-tolerant or radiation-hardened design and an understanding of the space environment. Experience with real-time operating systems such as RTEMS, FreeRTOS, or VxWorks. Experience with high-speed interfaces such as Ethernet, SpaceWire, SpaceFibre, CAN, PCIe, USB, or MIL-STD-1553. Experience with ARM-based embedded systems, U-Boot, ARM Trusted Firmware, device-tree overlays, or secure boot implementation. Experience contributing to upstream Linux or maintaining kernel modules, platform drivers, or low-level middleware. Experience with hypervisor isolation, virtualized I/O, partitioning, or mixed-criticality system design. Experience using RISC-V or Rust in production, platform, tooling, or security-sensitive environments. Exposure to onboard AI/ML compute or edge-processing hardware. Experience supporting government or defense programs with formal assurance, security, sovereignty, and documentation requirements. Some of Our Awesome Benefits: 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance option for employees and dependents 100% company-paid Basic Life (1x salary, up to $300K), AD&D, Short-Term, and Long-Term Disability insurance Health Savings Account (HSA) with an employer contribution, plus Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and pre-tax commuter benefits Carrot Fertility, which provides comprehensive, inclusive fertility healthcare and family-forming benefits with financial support One Medical membership for telemedicine and primary care Free, confidential Employee Assistance Program through MetLife and TELUS Health Fully paid parental leave: 16 weeks for birthing parents and 10 weeks for non-birthing parents (including adoption and surrogacy), plus an optional 2-week part-time return Flexible Time Off policy for vacation and sick leave, and 12 paid holidays 401(k) plan and equity options Daily catered lunches and snacks in office International exposure to our team in France Annual company off-sites and many social events and celebrations Relocation assistance when applicable *Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented people tend to only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Loft, we value respectful debate and people who aren’t afraid to challenge assumptions.  We strongly encourage you to apply, even if you don’t check all the boxes. Who We Are Loft: Space Made Simple.  Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable, and simple way to deploy missions in orbit. We integrate, launch, and operate spacecraft, offering end-to-end missions as a service across Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on-orbit AI, national security missions, and more. Leveraging our existing space infrastructure and an extensive inventory of satellite buses, Loft is reducing years-long integration and launch timelines to months. With more than 30 missions flown, Loft’s flight heritage and proven technologies enable customers to focus on their mission objectives. With a growing fleet on track to reach 30 satellites by 2027, we are scaling up quickly across our offices in San Francisco, CA | Golden, CO | and Toulouse, France to meet accelerating demand for space infrastructure. As an international company your resume will be reviewed by people across our offices so please attach a copy in English.