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Principal Software Engineer (Contract) - Flight Test & Integration

Confirmed live in the last 24 hours

ALTEN Technology USA

ALTEN Technology USA

Arlington, VA
Remote
Posted March 28, 2026

Job Description

We’re ALTEN Technology USA, an engineering company helping clients bring groundbreaking ideas to life—from advancing space exploration and life-saving medical devices to building autonomous electric vehicles. With 3,000+ experts across North America, we partner with leading companies in aerospace, medical devices, robotics, automotive, commercial vehicles, EVs, rail, and more.

As part of the global ALTEN Group—57,000+ engineers in 30 countries—we deliver across the entire product development cycle, from consulting to full project outsourcing.

When you join ALTEN Technology USA, you’ll collaborate on some of the world’s toughest engineering challenges, supported by mentorship, career growth opportunities, and comprehensive benefits. We take pride in fostering a culture where employees feel valued, supported, and inspired to grow.

As Principal Software Engineer (Contract) - Flight Test & Integration you will be responsible for;

 

The Principal Software I&T Engineer's primary responsibility will be contributing to the development and testing of customer's U.S.'s satellite flight software. This engineer will be involved in the full lifecycle of flight software development, from requirements definition through operations. However, because we are a small team where each person takes on many roles, this engineer will also contribute to mission concept development, in-house modeling and simulation capabilities, and proposal writing. Being at the cutting edge of space technology, we need someone who is eager to learn, grow, and take on new and potentially unfamiliar challenges. There is no shortage of fascinating problems to solve.

The Principal Software I&T Engineer will provide autonomous support of complex assignments, under the leadership of the Software Team Lead and Software Engineering Manager. The Principal Software I&T Engineer will have project and subject matter responsibility and authority.

Software Integration and Test - 60%

  • Develop and execute FSW verifications tests using both proprietary satellite digital twin software and a Hardware in the Loop (HIL) FlatSat.
  • Establish and document test methodologies and descriptions to test compliance with customer-based requirements.
  • Develop and implement software and tools for ground support equipment to test and validate flight software.
  • Contribute to document management, including versioning, bug reporting, and test plan documentation.
  • Oversee and conduct official validation tests.

Flight Software - 30%

  • Upgrade existing flight software for new missions
  • Contribute to the development of new satellite flight software for U.S. satellite platforms
  • Develop in-house tools to analyze flight software performance and assess its compatibility with new mission and conops
  • Develop and execute flight software verification and validation tests at the unit, module, subsystem, and platform level
  • Work with manufacturing engineers to support installation onto the hardware-in-the-loop test environments and eventual flight hardware
  • Participate in anomaly resolution activities and patch existing flight software

Additional Responsibilities - 10%

  • Support working groups, both internal and with customers and/or vendors
  • Support proposal writing, new business
  • Assess the software impacts of new hardware, conops, and missions

 

Qualifications;

 

Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.
  • Preferred: Master's in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Math) or related scientific areas.

Experience:

  • A minimum of 15 years with a Bachelor's degree, or 12 years with a Master's degree
  • Proven track-record of working with space hardware and/or flight software systems, starting from conceptual designs and tradeoffs through detailed design, development, manufacture, integration, test, deployment, and operations.

Knowledge, Skills, Demonstrated Capa

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