Embedded C Software Engineer for Spacecraft technology

Standard 8
Guildford, United Kingdom
Today
£70,000 pa

Salary

£70,000 pa

Job Type
Permanent
Work Pattern
Full-time
Work Location
Hybrid
Seniority
Mid
Education
Degree
Visa Sponsorship
Available
Security Clearance
Required
Posted
27 Jun 2026 (Today)

Benefits

Hybrid working Structured engineering environment Multidisciplinary team collaboration Mission-critical software development

Embedded C Software Engineer

Guildford / Hybrid

Standard 8 is working with an engineering team that builds embedded software for spacecraft and low orbit systems.

These are real platforms, flying in genuinely hostile conditions. Think NASA, thinkSpaceX and you're on the right lines.

This is not app-layer work dressed up as embedded. You'll be writing hardcore C close to the metal: hardware interfaces, tight timing constraints, comms protocols, real-time behaviour, and the messy integration problems that come with all of it. When the hardware is in orbit, the software has to be right, so there's very little room for guesswork.

You'll sit in a multidisciplinary team where software, electronics, systems and mission delivery all overlap. It moves quickly and the bar is high, because the software has to hold up when it actually counts.

The role

You'll develop embedded C for mission-critical systems and own it end to end: design it, build it, test it, integrate it, and support it once it's running.

The focus is robust, low-level software that talks straight to hardware. Day to day that means reading technical requirements, working out how the system really behaves, writing clean C, debugging the integration problems nobody else wants, and doing all of it inside a structured engineering process.


Day to Day

Writing embedded C for real-time and low-level systems

  • Developing software that interfaces directly with hardware
  • Working withRTOS and/or bare-metal environments
  • Supporting requirements definition, software design and implementation
  • Debugging timing, interface and integration issues
  • Working with communication protocols such as CAN, serial and IP networking
  • Building Python scripts or tools for testing, automation or support tasks
  • Taking software through review, verification and system-level testing
  • Collaborating with electronics, systems and hardware engineers
  • Keeping delivery moving without cutting corners on engineering quality

What you’ll need
  • Strong commercial experience developing embedded software inC
  • Good understanding of real-time software development
  • Experience withRTOS or bare-metal systems such as VxWorks, RT Linux, FreeRTOS or similar
  • Solid knowledge of low-level software and hardware interaction
  • Experience working with structured software development processes
  • Python experience for scripting, tooling, test automation or diagnostics
  • Familiarity with interfaces and protocols such as CAN, UART, SPI, I2C, Ethernet or IP networking
  • Comfortable using modern version control and collaborative development workflows
  • Able to work pragmatically in a fast-moving engineering environment

Useful background
  • Digital electronics knowledge
  • Experience with ARM, SPARC, RISC-V or similar processor architectures
  • Previous work in aerospace, defence, robotics, automotive, space, industrial systems or another safety/mission-critical domain

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