Software Engineer, Hardware Systems

About Kairos Aerospace 

At Kairos Aerospace, we combine innovative aerospace systems with advanced data science. Unlike traditional aerospace companies, we sell information, not hardware - we operate our sensors cost-effectively at continental scale to produce novel data streams about pressing global problems. First on our list: spotting hard-to-monitor emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that accelerates climate change. Since starting continuous survey operations in 2018, Kairos has removed methane emissions equal to over 9.2 million tonnes of CO2e through our work. To put that in perspective, that’s equivalent to over 2 million cars being removed from the roads for a year or shutting down about seventeen 350 MW coal-fired power plants. We call that a good start. As a team, we love science and engineering, we love getting our hands dirty with hardware and software, and we love seeing our work make a difference in the real world. We’ve created a diverse, collaborative, supportive, and fun environment based on integrity and treating people right. So no matter your gender, gender identity, race, age, beliefs, sexual orientation, or disabilities, we welcome you and would like to work with you. :-) It’s never boring, it’s always challenging, and we’re usually laughing.

About the Position

Kairos hardware ranges from Linux single board computers to short wave infrared imaging cameras to GPS/INS systems and are used to collect the various imagery that goes into our final data product. Directly related to the hardware, Kairos actively maintains the following software projects which enable that operation:

* Python based platform for ingesting real time flight telemetry, displaying data to a front end, and acting as an endpoint for a user to communicate with the imaging devices. * Flight software (C++) that leverages camera SDKs to collect and store data. * Repository of custom Debian packages used to configure a Kairos single board computer. * Python based project that leverages pyvisa to control lab testing equipment (power supply, electronic load, oscilloscope) to run a suite of automated tests on our hardware.
A software engineer operating in this role will contribute and maintain some or all of these projects. Kairos is currently hitting a scale point and much of our hardware-facing software needs to be improved in order to enable safe, smooth and scalable operations to meet that demand.
You will work directly at the interface between the hardware, operations, and software teams to listen to field feedback, take in suggestions, and implement the solution.You will also work directly with the hardware itself at our office in Mountain View enabling you to reproduce field issues, troubleshoot them, and push fixes out into the field.

Must Haves

• 3+ years of experience
• The ability to learn quickly in a self-guided manner - much of what we do is solving new problems by integrating one or more pieces of new technology.
• Experience working with hardware systems at either an embedded level or a level higher up in the stack (telemetry systems, hardware-in-the-loop testing, hardware simulation, etc)
• An ability to work in conjunction with hardware engineers and operations engineers to take input and suggestions and turn those into scalable software solutions.
• A desire to solve real-world problems over working on technical problems in isolation - none of our work fits in neat boxes.  Instead, we have a team that is focused on the impact our work can have on the future of life on the planet and prioritizes real-world progress over problem-focus purity.

Nice to Haves

• Significant Python experience.
• C/C++ experience.
• Familiarity with Bash / shell scripting
• Interest in developing testing systems around physical hardware
• Experience working with embedded Linux systems
• System administration experience - building Docker images and defining and configuring customized Linux distributions
• Experience integrating with camera capture SDKs for network and USB connected cameras.
• Experience using React to build web UIs.

Life at Kairos

A few important facts about working at Kairos Aerospace: - We provide health, dental, and vision insurance, including subsidized coverage for dependents. Our 401K plan does matching based on the amount of methane we removed from the atmosphere in a given year. - We think death-march hours are a bad way to run a company. We expect something approximating a 40-hour workweek, but mostly we just care that your work gets done. No, really. (Full disclosure: we occasionally put in some extra hours during crunch periods, but that is the exception, not the norm). - We do not track vacation time, nor do we have set hours to be in the office. Instead, we encourage taking real vacations, mental health days, leaving early to pick up the kids, working from home, time-shifting commutes, staying home when you're sick, ducking out to the gym - we believe work time should be flexible. In this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have transitioned to 100% remote work aside from hardware and flight operations and plan to continue having remote positions in perpetuity. (We love it when kids make a cameo in a video call.)