How much experience is required?

10–15 years of relevant experience for this Flight Software Architect role.

Does The Exploration Company sponsor work visas for this role?

Yes — the posting indicates visa sponsorship is available for the right candidate.

What seniority level is this role?

The Exploration Company targets senior candidates for this position.

Is this full-time or contract?

Full-time for this Flight Software Architect role at The Exploration Company.

Flight Software Architect at The Exploration Company

Joblaze summary

The Flight Software Architect at The Exploration Company is responsible for defining and maintaining the software architecture for spacecraft flight systems, ensuring alignment with mission requirements and safety standards. This role requires expertise in real-time embedded software, system integration, and technical risk management, along with a strong background in aerospace applications. Ideal candidates will have 10-15 years of experience in software engineering, particularly in mission-critical environments, and the ability to collaborate across multiple engineering disciplines. The position emphasizes a pragmatic approach to problem-solving and effective communication within a dynamic

Joblaze insights

Listed today — first seen on Joblaze October 19, 2026. Last confirmed on The Exploration Company's careers page October 19, 2026.

Quick facts

How much experience is required?: 10–15 years of relevant experience for this Flight Software Architect role.
Does The Exploration Company sponsor work visas for this role?: Yes — the posting indicates visa sponsorship is available for the right candidate.
What seniority level is this role?: The Exploration Company targets senior candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?: Full-time for this Flight Software Architect role at The Exploration Company.

From the original posting

The Flight Software Architect plays a key role in defining and maintaining the software architecture for our spacecraft flight software. The role ensures that the flight software architecture meets mission needs, system-level requirements, and safety and reliability objectives, while remaining scalable, maintainable, and suitable for the evolving needs of our spacecraft platforms. Working closely with Flight Software, Systems Engineering, Avionics, GNC, Mission Operations, and other functional disciplines, the Flight Software Architect drives architectural decisions, technical consistency, and the integration of software across the spacecraft.

Key Responsibilities

In your capacity as Flight Software Architect, your role will be continuously evolving, but day to day your duties will include:

Software architecture & design — Define, develop, and maintain the overall flight software architecture, including software components, interfaces, data flows, and execution models, ensuring alignment with spacecraft system architecture and mission objectives.
Technical leadership & architectural decisions — Drive key architectural decisions and establish design principles, technical standards, and best practices for flight software development. Provide technical guidance to software engineers and ensure consistency across software components and development activities.
System integration & interfaces — Define and coordinate software interfaces with avionics, onboard computers, sensors, actuators, GNC, communication systems, and other spacecraft subsystems. Ensure robust integration across functional disciplines and support the resolution of cross-system technical challenges.
Requirements & traceability — Translate mission and system-level requirements into software architectural requirements, design constraints, and interface specifications. Ensure traceability between requirements, architecture, implementation, and verification, working closely with Systems Engineering and functional chain owners.
Reliability, safety & performance — Ensure that architectural decisions address fault tolerance, robustness, timing constraints, resource utilization, failure detection and recovery, and overall spacecraft reliability. Contribute to safety analyses, failure management strategies, and the definition of appropriate software verification and validation approaches.
Verification, validation & technical risk management — Identify and mitigate architectural risks, assess technical trade-offs, and support design reviews, integration campaigns, and verification activities. Ensure that the architecture is validated against mission requirements and that critical technical assumptions are verified early in the development lifecycle.
Cross-functional collaboration & technical communication — Act as a technical reference for flight software architecture, facilitating alignment between Flight Software, Systems Engineering, Avionics, GNC, Mission Operations, and external partners, including ESA where applicable. Communicate architectural decisions, constraints, and trade-offs clearly to both technical teams and project stakeholders.

In the role of Flight Software Architect, ideally, you will have the following:

10–15 years of professional experience in software engineering, including substantial experience in flight software, embedded software, or safety- and mission-critical systems.
Proven experience defining and evolving software architectures for complex critical software systems, ideally for spacecraft, launch vehicles, satellites, or other aerospace applications.
Strong knowledge of real-time embedded software, operating systems, hardware–software interfaces, resource-constrained computing, and distributed or fault-tolerant systems.
Experience translating system-level requirements into software architectures, interface specifications, and verification strategies.
A solid understanding of software integration, testing, verification and validation, and configuration and change management in a complex engineering environment.
Experience with architectural trade-off analysis, technical risk management, and making sound engineering decisions under performance, reliability, schedule, and resource constraints.
The ability to work effectively across multiple engineering disciplines and align stakeholders around clear technical solutions.
Strong structured thinking, analytical skills, and the ability to simplify complex technical challenges into robust and maintainable architectures.
Excellent technical communication skills, with the ability to explain architectural decisions, document design rationale, and provide technical guidance to multidisciplinary teams.
A strong ownership mindset, a pragmatic approach to problem-solving, and a passion for developing reliable software that enables humanity’s exploration of space.

We’re Agile - we make decisions fast whilst keeping our goals and systems in mind

Standard company text repeated across The Exploration Company's postings is omitted here.

Flight Software Architect

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