Staff Applications Engineer, Archer
Tools
$134.4-168k
More information about location
5 days a week in office (San Jose, CA)
Urban air mobility developer
Open for applications
Urban air mobility developer
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
$134.4-168k
More information about location
5 days a week in office (San Jose, CA)
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To accelerate the benefits of sustainable air mobility.
Role
Who you are
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of professional software development experience, with a strong emphasis on tooling, automation, or DevOps
- Expert proficiency in Python, including experience with relevant libraries for I/O, data manipulation (e.g., Pandas, NumPy), and system interaction
- Demonstrable experience designing, building, and maintaining CI/CD pipelines
- Proven experience building tools that interface directly with hardware or real-time data streams (e.g., working with data acquisition systems, parsing custom binary protocols, interacting with serial devices)
- A strong foundation in software development best practices, including version control (Git), code reviews, and testing
Desirable
- Experience with back-end development (e.g., using Flask or Django to build simple APIs or dashboards for displaying test data)
- Familiarity with compiled languages like C/C++ for low-level hardware interaction
- Experience with containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
- Knowledge of hardware communication standards like CAN bus, ARINC-429, or RS-422
- Previous experience in the aerospace, automotive, robotics, or a similar industry involving complex hardware systems
- Familiarity with Tool Qualification as guided by DO-330
What the job involves
- Our team is seeking a talented and versatile engineer to bridge the gap between our cutting-edge hardware and our software development lifecycle
- This isn't a typical DevOps role. You'll be responsible for building the essential tools and automation that allow our software teams to test and validate their code against real, physical systems
- You'll work directly with data being sampled from sensors, streamed across networks, and generated by complex hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbeds
- Develop Hardware Integration Tools: Design, build, and maintain robust Python applications to capture, parse, and analyze real-time data from hardware test setups
- This includes interfacing with data streams over serial, CAN, Ethernet (UDP), and other communication protocols
- Own the CI/CD Pipeline: Architect and manage our automation and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Teamcity, Jenkins) to integrate hardware testing directly into our software build, test, and deployment processes
- Maintain and Improve Test Automation Frameworks: Build and support test harnesses and frameworks that allow developers to easily write and execute tests against physical hardware or emulators
- Enable AI Integration: Support the deployment and integration of LLMs to existing workflows
- Build for Reliability: Ensure the infrastructure and tooling you create are scalable, reliable, and easy to maintain
- Document your work and champion best practices across the engineering organization
- Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work closely with hardware engineers, embedded software developers, and integration / lab teams to understand their requirements and build the tools they need to succeed
- Please note that this job description is intended to provide a general overview of the position and does not include an exhaustive list of responsibilities
Our take
Electric air taxis may sound like a pipedream, but companies like Archer are in the process of testing models that they hope to begin producing at scale in 2025. Designed to be quiet and efficient, its current model can fly at speeds of 150 miles per hour and cover 60 miles per flight. With urban transport in mind, these air taxis are both greener and vastly more efficient than traditional vehicles.
Given the congestion and pollution issues that many cities are facing, it's easy to imagine such transport taking over. It’s also worth noting that although Archer plans to run them with human pilots initially, the company has automation as part of its long-term goals.
Other players exist in this space: EHang, a Chinese firm, flew its first aerial taxi in America in 2020. However, Archer has big backers and customers such as United Airlines (acting both as an investor and launch customer) and manufacturing partner Stellantis with whom it is mass-producing its flagship Midnight eVTOL aircraft.
There's certainly a growing demand for clean transport without sacrificing speed, but many barriers still remain in Archer's way as it must help to initiate a seismic shift in transportation infrastructure and behaviors to reach mass adoption. That being said, it has the funding behind it, raising close to $2 billion in post-IPO funding since 2021.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
44% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (1 round)
Jul 2020
$55.7m
SERIES A
Total funding: $55.7m
Company HQ
Tasman and Zanker, San Jose, CA
Leadership
Adam Goldstein
(CEO)Started their career in financial services, before co-founding Vettery, a talent marketplace, in 2012. Founded Archer in 2018.
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