Senior Embedded Software Engineer – Cyber
Innoflight LLC · San Diego, CA
$170,000–$215,000
Jul 19, 2026
San Diego, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior embedded software engineering role focused on building cyber-secure software for satellite avionics and payload data processing systems. The work spans low-level driver development, Linux kernel and RTOS configuration, cryptographic implementations, and secure networking protocols on multi-core processors paired with FPGAs. The position also carries a mentorship responsibility, guiding junior engineers through design reviews and code walkthroughs. An active U.S. security clearance is required.
Senior level · 9+ years · San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA · Bachelor's required · Secret clearance · Full-time
Pay in the description: $170,000–$215,000
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $166,860 (middle half $131,418–$198,246). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The JD requires an 'Active U.S. Security Clearance' but does not specify the level (Secret, Top Secret, etc.). The minimum clearance level has been set to Secret as the most common baseline for aerospace/defense embedded roles; the actual level required may be higher.
Hardware interface skills (SPI, I2C, UART, GPIO, PCIe, Ethernet, SpaceWire) and cryptographic algorithms (AES, RSA, ECDSA, ECDH) appear in the 'WHAT YOU'LL DO' responsibilities section rather than the hard-requirements block ('WHAT YOU'LL NEED'), so they are marked preferred. The 'WHAT YOU'LL NEED' section does reference networking/communications protocols and cryptographic principles broadly, but names no specific protocols or algorithms there.
Bootloaders U-Boot and GRUB are named in the responsibilities section; the requirements block references bootloaders generically, so these are marked preferred with U-Boot as primary and GRUB as an alternative.
Processor architectures (ARM Cortex, RISC-V) and FPGA vendors (Xilinx, Microsemi, Microchip, Vorago) appear only in the responsibilities narrative. FPGA is captured as a preferred skill representing the integration context; specific vendor names are not emitted as separate skills.
OpenCL/CUDA is explicitly called 'a plus' in the requirements section and is marked preferred accordingly.
The degree requirement is a Bachelor's in Electrical or Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field — no equivalent-experience substitution is offered, so it is treated as a hard requirement.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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