Embedded C Software Engineer for Space Exploration

Embedded C Software Engineer

Guildford / Hybrid

Standard 8 Systems is working with an engineering team building embedded software for spacecraft and low-orbit systems. These are real-time platforms, flying in genuinely hostile conditions, the kind of environment where you think NASA, you think SpaceX and you're in the right territory.

This isn't app-layer work wearing an embedded label. You'll write C close to the metal: hardware interfaces, tight timing constraints, comms protocols, real-time behaviour, and the integration problems that only show up once hardware and software meet. When the thing you built is in orbit, there's no patching it next sprint, so the bar is high and nobody's cutting corners.

You'll sit inside a multidisciplinary team where software, electronics, systems and mission delivery all overlap. It moves fast, and the standard stays 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, support it once it's flying. The focus is robust, low-level software that talks directly to hardware. Day to day that's reading technical requirements, working out how the system genuinely behaves, writing clean C, debugging the integration problems nobody else wants to touch, all 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 in RTOS and/or bare-metal environments

Contributing to 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 and tools for testing, automation or support

Taking software through review, verification and system-level testing

Working closely 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 in C

Good understanding of real...