Loft Orbital
Director of Embedded Software & FPGA Engineering
$195K–$275K
Golden, CO · On-site · Director · Full-time · Posted Sep 21, 2026
- Experience
- 10+ years; no alternative stated.
About the job
Leads the embedded software and FPGA organization, setting technical direction and building reusable, secure engineering foundations for Loft’s satellite platforms.
What you'll do
- Own the ESW and FPGA roadmap, architecture, and interfaces across hardware, software, and operations.
- Set engineering standards and build foundations for Linux, Yocto/OpenEmbedded, CI/CD, reproducible builds, and secure environments.
- Lead and develop distributed teams, resolve cross-company technical issues, and represent the organization with customers and government or defense stakeholders.
What they ask for
- 10+ years in embedded systems, FPGA, firmware, or related engineering, including delivery of mission-critical hardware or software.
- Experience leading technical teams, including geographically distributed teams.
- Deep experience with FPGA design, embedded C/C++, real-time systems, and hardware/software integration.
- Strong Linux kernel and embedded Linux experience, plus Yocto/OpenEmbedded and CI/CD experience.
Nice to have
- Spacecraft avionics, satellite flight systems, or standardized satellite platform experience.
- Radiation-tolerant or radiation-hardened design experience.
Pay
USD 195,000–275,000 (per-year-salary) — base salary
Tools
FPGA, embedded C/C++, Linux, Yocto/OpenEmbedded, CI/CD, hypervisors, RISC-V, Rust
AI focus
The role supports satellite platforms with increasing onboard AI and compute; exposure to onboard AI/ML compute or edge-processing hardware is a nice-to-have.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative