Flight Software Engineering Intern

About Dispatch

Satellites for Manufacturing in Space

Tech

Dispatch is building an autonomous reentry vehicle in house. The key technical challenge is making reentry cheap and repeatable; We do this with a proprietary heat shield made from industrial ceramics that costs 1% of traditional thermal protection systems. We build the full satellite in house. The vehicle is designed for reuse - the heat shield is the primary consumable, replaceable in a 2-week turnaround. You'll see your work in orbit within 12 months. If surviving Mach 20 reentry, iterating on flight hardware in days instead of years, and building the physical layer of the space economy sounds like your kind of fun, we should talk.

The role

**About Dispatch**Dispatch is building refurbishable reentry vehicles for in-space manufacturing. Spark-1 is our first vehicle, a 150 kg spacecraft that hosts payloads in orbit and brings them back to Earth.Our vehicles are designed, built, and operated in-house, from spacecraft systems and flight software through reentry and recovery.**About This Role**Internships at Dispatch are in person in San Francisco. We're hiring for Spring 2027 and Summer 2027. In your application, tell us which term you're applying for, or both. Candidates must be actively pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree. Due to U.S. export control requirements, candidates must be a U.S. person (U.S. citizen or permanent resident). We are unable to sponsor visas.The Flight Software team is responsible for the software that runs on Spark-1's flight computer and peripheral boards, from command and telemetry and GNC execution through fault management and the reentry sequence.Interns at Dispatch work directly on problems that affect upcoming missions. You'll own meaningful technical work and collaborate closely with engineers across GNC, avionics, and mission operations as we design, test, and operate Spark-1.**Responsibilities**• Own or contribute to flight software for Spark-1 in Rust and firmware for peripheral boards in C++• Implement GNC, power, thermal, and fault management logic on the flight computer from analysis and simulation models• Develop command and telemetry handling, packet definitions, drivers for sensors and actuators, and the ground tools that decode them• Build and maintain test infrastructure, including unit tests, software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop regression, and flatsat automation• Support integration and test of flight software with avionics hardware and mission operations tools**Basic Qualifications**• Currently pursuing a BS, MS, or PhD in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, or a related technical field• Experience through coursework, research, internships, or engineering project teams in one or more areas of embedded software, systems programming, real-time systems, or hardware interfacing• Familiarity with Rust, C/C++, and Python, and with Linux development and git• Comfortable writing software that talks to hardware over interfaces such as SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, or Ethernet and testing it against real devices**Preferred Skills and Experience**• At least one year of experience on a technical project team such as CubeSat, Rocket Team, AIAA Design-Build-Fly, Formula SAE, or similar• Previous experience developing flight software or firmware for spacecraft, launch vehicles, drones, or robotics• Familiarity with embedded Rust, embedded Linux such as PetaLinux or Yocto, RTOS environments, or SoC platforms such as Zynq UltraScale+• Experience with flight software frameworks such as F Prime or cFS, or with controls and state estimation• Strong communication and technical documentation skillsDue to U.S. export control requirements, candidates must be a U.S. person (U.S. citizen or permanent resident). We are unable to sponsor visas.