Embedded Firmware Engineer - HUSKY Bus Platform

About the role

Urban Sky is seeking an Embedded Firmware Engineer to own the technical development and product evolution of our HUSKY bus platform - the backbone of our stratospheric flight systems. HUSKY provides integrated power distribution, Ethernet-based communications, and onboard compute for our balloon vehicles and customer payloads. This role sits at the intersection of firmware engineering, systems architecture, and product development. As the product lead for HUSKY, you will work closely with the portfolio manager to drive R&D iteration cycles from architecture through validation and handoff to manufacturing. You will also interface directly with defense customers, supporting integration, network accreditation, and cybersecurity compliance requirements. This is a senior, high-ownership role for an engineer who thrives in a vertically integrated startup where decisions at the firmware layer have direct consequences on flight safety, mission success, and customer outcomes.

Responsibilities

• HUSKY Bus Product Ownership
• Serve as the technical product lead for the HUSKY bus platform, owning the firmware architecture and driving iterative development cycles in collaboration with the portfolio manager
• Define firmware requirements with the portfolio manager, as informed by hardware trade studies, system-level constraints, and customer mission needs
• Lead design reviews, architecture decisions, and trade space analyses for new HUSKY revisions
• Manage the transition of validated designs from R&D into the manufacturing pipeline, ensuring design-for-manufacturability and documentation completeness
• Maintain version-controlled firmware baselines and establish robust release processes and configuration management practices
• Manage and develop firmware configuration tools to enable an automated customer interface
• Embedded Firmware Development
• Design, develop, and verify embedded firmware for real-time systems operating in the stratospheric environment, including power management, communication schemas, network architecture, and compute subsystems
• Develop and maintain firmware for low-level hardware interfaces including I2C, SPI, UART, CAN, and Ethernet
• Implement and optimize RTOS-based or bare-metal firmware for microcontrollers and FPGAs as appropriate
• Ensure firmware robustness for operation in extreme stratospheric conditions: low temperatures, low pressure, radiation effects, and power constraints
• Develop and execute firmware-level unit tests, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test benches, and integration test procedures
• Systems Architecture & Model-Based Development
• Define and document the HUSKY system architecture, including interface control documents (ICDs), data flow diagrams, and power budgets
• Apply model-based systems engineering (MBSE) principles to capture system behavior, manage requirements traceability, and support design verification
• Develop and maintain network topology models covering onboard Ethernet, serial communications, and payload interfaces
• Collaborate with mechanical and electrical engineers to ensure firmware design is tightly coupled with hardware constraints and thermal/power profiles
• Electrical Engineering Interface
• Leverage a strong working knowledge of electrical engineering principles to inform firmware design decisions, including signal integrity, power sequencing, and peripheral driver development
• Partner with PCB designers and electrical engineers to review schematics, validate hardware bring-up, and debug hardware-firmware interaction issues
• Participate in hardware trade studies and component selection decisions where firmware implications are significant
• Defense Customer & Cybersecurity Support
• Serve as a technical point of contact for defense customers integrating with the HUSKY bus, supporting requirements definition, interface documentation, and integration activities
• Support defense cybersecurity and network accreditation efforts, including Risk Management Framework (RMF) processes, STIGs, and authority-to-o

Benefits

Additional Information

About Urban Sky: Urban Sky is a venture-backed aerospace startup that pioneers utilization of the stratosphere and reimagines the way humans view and analyze the earth. We design, build, operate, and sell stratospheric balloon systems, and the data we collect supports a wide range of applications, from real-time wildfire monitoring to urban mapping. Our technology is also employed by government customers including the Department of Defense (DoD), NASA, and others. Urban Sky sends flight vehicles to the stratosphere on a weekly basis. Our team consists of engineers, makers, developers, and doers who believe in the power of human potential when passion meets utility within a small, supportive team. At Urban Sky we strive to create a team culture grounded in candor, inclusion, respect and empowerment. We aim to build the next chapter of stratospheric history in Denver and are seeking self-starting, open-minded, and hard-working team members.

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