Xona is the navigational intelligence company bringing real-time, centimeter-level certainty to any device, anywhere on Earth.
With Pulsar – the world’s most advanced PNT satellite infrastructure in Low Earth Orbit – Xona will offer a future-proof, backwards-compatible global positioning system optimized for absolute precision, superior power, and robust protection.
This is an individual contributor role for an Embedded Software Engineer to join our team, focusing on the application software for our satellite systems. You’ll be instrumental in maintaining and evolving the software the drives our proprietary hardware, as well as upgrading and extending our build system to ensure robust on-orbit updates.
What You’ll DoDevelop, maintain, and enhance embedded application software for Xona’s satellite systems
Maintain and extend drivers supporting in-house programmable logic (PL) deployments
Improve the robustness, reliability, and scalability of the build system and dependency chain
Develop software for PL fault detection and provide interfaces for upstream redundancy configuration
Evolve software applications as requirements change by adding, modifying, or removing features
Extend and maintain Xona’s custom Linux OS to support high-performance control and data transfer with proprietary hardware
Implement hardware emulation frameworks to support software development, build, and test workflows
Support and automate CI/CD pipelines for full PS+PL image testing and deployment
Contribute to the Xona OS roadmap, including exploration of asymmetric processing architectures
3–5 years of professional experience in embedded software development
Strong proficiency in C/C++
Experience with CMake-based build systems
Hands-on experience with low-level firmware development and debugging
Strong documentation practices and attention to detail
Ability to work independently as an individual contributor in a complex technical environment
Experience with AMD/Xilinx platforms, ideally RFSoC or Zynq UltraScale+, including PS+PL architectures
Background in real-time operating systems (RTOS)
Familiarity with CI/CD and DevOps practices for embedded systems
Prior experience developing flight software or software for space systems
Hands-on lab experience testing engineering models and flight hardware
Knowledge of PetaLinux and Yocto build flows
Experience integrating hardware emulation frameworks such as QEMU
For U.S. Roles: To comply with U.S. Government space technology export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the United States (i.e. Green Card holder), or other protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
For U.K. Roles: To comply with U.K. regulations, this role requires Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) checks, and successful candidates must be eligible to obtain UK Security Clearance (SC).
For Canada Roles: Successful candidates must obtain and hold a security clearance at the reliability status level, and pass security assessment for the Canadian Controlled Goods Program (CGP) and ITAR.
We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.
