Embedded Software Engineer

About the role

Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the Forgotten Frontier and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere.

Mission

Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.

Levels

We are hiring at Level I, Level II, and Level III through this posting. Your level will be determined during the interview process based on your technical skills, relevant experience, and demonstrated scope of ownership.

What you’ll do

- Build and ship flight-critical embedded software for long-endurance stratospheric aircraft

- Own embedded subsystems end to end: architecture, implementation, bring-up, debugging, test, and flight validation

- Write firmware for MCU-based avionics, sensors, actuators, power systems, and comms interfaces

- Integrate sensors and peripherals (IMU, GNSS, air data, magnetometer, servos, radios) and build reliable drivers and middleware

- Design robust telemetry, logging, and health monitoring to support long-duration autonomous operations

- Build test harnesses, HIL hooks, and automation that makes iteration loops faster

- Support integration, production bring-up, and flight ops in the desert

What we’re looking for

- 2+ years shipping real embedded systems (aerospace, robotics, automotive, defense, or similarly high-reliability domains)

- Strong C/C++ fundamentals and comfort working close to hardware

- Experience with RTOS or bare-metal firmware, interrupts, timing, and deterministic systems

- Experience with common embedded interfaces and protocols (SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, Ethernet)

- Strong debugging skills using scopes, logic analyzers, JTAG, and real-world fault reproduction

- Comfort moving fast, owning outcomes, and troubleshooting in the field

Why Icarus

- Meaningful equity

- Top market salary and bonuses

- Health, dental, and vision insurance

- Factory in El Segundo

- Real ownership, real hardware, real flight

- Small team, massive responsibility

- High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture

- Dream desk setup

- Daily lunch

- Unlimited celsius

This is not a normal engineering job

- We are pioneers, not corporate managers. Icarus deliberately optimizes for a high signal (engineers) to noise (management) ratio, where engineering, flight, and execution matter more than process, politics, or management overhead

- You will work side by side with the CEO and a small team of world-class builders. You will own your subsystem end to end. Design it. Build it. Break it. Fix it. Validate it in the desert. Fly it. Then do it again, faster