Software Integration Lead

The Software Integration Lead owns integration truth and delivery readiness for Portal’s Starburst-1 mission. This role is accountable for bringing HIL on‑prem at Portal in close partnership with avionics and systems engineering, validating external software drops against Portal environments, and translating integration behavior into actionable risk and schedule decisions. The position operates at the HW/FW/SW boundary, drives reproducible integration and triage with evidence‑based workflows, and establishes lightweight guardrails (build provenance, configuration baselines, test evidence).

• Lead software integration across flight software, avionics, and system interfaces.
• Partner day‑to‑day with the avionics engineer leading HIL bring‑up to debug, isolate, and close cross‑domain issues (HW/FW/SW).
• Define and implement HIL software integration components, harnesses, automation, and observability (logging/telemetry capture, instrumentation, reproducibility tooling).
• Drive structured triage and root‑cause isolation using hypothesis → experiment → evidence → regression, including time‑boxing and controlled experiments.
• Establish integration readiness criteria and “integratable build” standards for HIL and system‑level testing (lightweight gates that enforce repeatability).
• Support bench‑level debugging using invasive and non‑invasive tools as needed (serial consoles, packet capture, loopbacks, fault injection; scope/logic analyzer familiarity strongly preferred).

• Serve as the primary day‑to‑day technical interface for software delivery coordination with external software vendors.
• Own software delivery truth: require and curate release artifacts for each drop (versioning, release notes, hashes/manifests, known issues, environment assumptions) and map them to tested capabilities and defects.
• Validate external drops in Portal’s integration environment; identify environment deltas (libraries/config/hardware assumptions) and drive closure plans with clear owners and evidence.
• Communicate integration status, blockers, bounded risks, and schedule impacts to leadership and cross‑functional stakeholders.
• Support go/no‑go decisions for integration milestones using traceable test evidence and documented assumptions.

• Establish essential guardrails for repeatable integration: configuration baselines, build provenance, test evidence captures, and documentation that enables speed rather than process.
• Produce durable technical artifacts others can use without you (interface contracts, runbooks, failure catalogs, integration notes, debug playbooks).
• Partner with systems engineering to keep integration work aligned to requirements, interfaces, and mission constraints while maintaining a bias for action under ambiguity.
• Contribute to internal tooling and workflows (CI, artifact storage, issue tracking) as needed to support integration velocity and rigor.
• Provide technical mentorship and integration discipline to engineers interacting with HIL, test infrastructure, and external software deliveries.

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with significant responsibility for system integration, test infrastructure, or delivery in complex systems.
• Demonstrated experience operating at the HW/FW/SW boundary (embedded systems, avionics‑like interfaces, distributed systems, or hardware‑integrated software).
• Proven record of hands‑on bench integration (HIL/test racks/system test benches) including building or operating integration harnesses and automation.
• Experience coordinating delivery across teams and/or external partners without direct authority, including driving to reproducible evidence.
• Strong debugging and root‑cause isolation skills using disciplined, evidence‑based workflows.

• Startup/small‑team experience where you owned integration delivery under ambiguous requirements and limited resources.
• Aerospace/spacecraft, avionics, defense, robotics, or other mission‑/safety‑critical system experience.
• Release engineering experience (build provenance, artifact management, regression…