Software Engineer Mid / Senior — Embedded Systems & HITL

Position Description: Software Engineer Mid / Senior — Embedded Systems & Hardware-in-the-Loop (HITL).

Location: Reston, VA (on-site at customer facility; occasional Washington, DC).

ZTI Solutions, LLC is hiring an embedded software engineer to support a U.S. Department of Defense program developing mission-critical embedded systems. The successful candidate will be embedded with a multidisciplinary team of software, hardware, and systems engineers responsible for the design, development, integration, and certification of low-level software running on bare metal targets and interfacing with custom and government-furnished hardware. This is a hands-on engineering role requiring strong fundamentals in embedded software, networking, and test automation, as well as the ability to operate effectively in a regulated, security-conscious environment.

Job Responsibilities:

• Design and develop low-level bare metal infrastructure (boot, startup, board support packages, drivers, and runtime services) for embedded compute platforms.
• Design, implement, and optimize networking protocols and stacks (e.g., Ethernet, TCP/IP/UDP, MIL-STD-1553, ARINC-429, CAN, SpaceWire, or program-specific protocols) at the firmware/driver level.
• Profile, debug, and tune performance, memory utilization, and real-time behavior on resource-constrained targets.
• Produce design artifacts (interface control documents, software design descriptions, and design review materials) consistent with program and DoD documentation standards.
• Develop and maintain automated test suites suitable for product qualification, acceptance, and certification activities.
• Design, build, and operate Hardware-in-the-Loop (HITL) test environments, including stimulus generation, instrumentation, and data capture.
• Author and execute test procedures aligned to applicable standards (e.g., DO-178C, MIL-STD-498/882, or program-specific verification plans) and support independent verification and validation (IV&V) activities.
• Triage failures, perform root-cause analysis, and drive defects to closure within the program's configuration management and issue-tracking processes.
• Integrate developed software with the core system baseline and with associated hardware components, ensuring interface compliance and end-to-end functionality.
• Collaborate with hardware, FPGA, systems, and cybersecurity engineers to resolve cross-discipline integration issues.
• Support laboratory bring-up, system integration test (SIT), formal qualification test (FQT), and field/flight test events as required.
• Participate in peer code reviews, design reviews, and technical interchange meetings (TIMs) with internal and government stakeholders.
• Keep up to date on the newest embedded, real-time, and cybersecurity innovations in the field and apply relevant innovations to mission systems.

Qualifications:

Typical Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline; career experience, knowledge, and industry certifications will be considered in lieu of degrees.
• 5 years or more of professional software engineering experience, with a substantial portion in embedded, bare metal, or real-time environments.
• Proficiency in C and/or C++ for embedded targets; working knowledge of assembly for at least one common architecture (ARM, PowerPC, x86, or RISC-V).
• 3 years of demonstrated experience implementing or extending low-level drivers, board support packages (BSPs), or networking protocol stacks.
• 3 years of hands-on experience developing automated tests and operating HITL or equivalent benchtop test environments.
• Familiarity with version control (Git), build systems (Make/CMake/Bazel), and continuous integration pipelines.
• Active U.S. DoD Secret security clearance at time of hire; U.S. citizenship required.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Experience with safety- or mission-critical certification efforts (e.g., DO-178C, ARP4754A, MIL-STD-882, NIST SP 800-53/171, RMF).
• Experience with RTOS environments (VxWorks, Integrity, LynxOS, FreeRTOS, Zephyr) and/or Linux kernel/driver development.
• Experience with test frameworks such as Google Test, pytest, LabVIEW, NI TestStand, or program-specific test harnesses.
• Familiarity with cybersecurity requirements for embedded systems and supply-chain risk management (SCRM).
• Knowledge of professional software engineering best practices for the full software development lifecycle; including coding standards, peer code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, monitoring, and operations.
• Experience integrating software with custom and government-furnished hardware in a security-conscious environment.
• Demonstrated experience in delivering software using agile/scrum methodologies in a DoD program environment.
• Strong troubleshooting skills; able to resolve integration issues and support hardware/software interface debugging independently.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills with both functional and technical counterparts, including the ability to communicate with users, other technical teams, and senior management to collect requirements, describe technical designs, and convey product strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to partner with and mentor junior software engineers in embedded, test, and integration disciplines.
• Experience with configuration management, automated testing, and Test/Behavior Driven Development (T/BDD); Unit, Regression, and Integration Testing.
• Familiarity with object-oriented design and with functional programming methodology.
• Applicable industry technical/leadership certifications: Security+, AWS/Azure cloud practitioner certifications, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), or others.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced and challenging integrated-team environment at a DoD customer site, with up to 25% CONUS/OCONUS travel to government, customer, and test facilities.
• Active U.S. DoD Top Secret or TS/SCI clearance.

Benefits:

• 3-4 Weeks Paid Time Off.
• All Federal Holiday's Paid Vacation.
• Four Percent Matching 401K.
• Full health/vision/dental benefits for the employee and family paid 100% by ZTI Solutions, LLC. 

ZTI Solutions, LLC was founded in 1997 in Virginia and is classified as a small business. The company is owned and operated by its founder, Rudy Zadnik, who emphasizes moral and business excellence over increasing company profits. This results in a more customer-oriented attitude towards mission accomplishment, as opposed to growing profits or sales.Our approach to consulting and engineering centers around using only highly skilled personnel who are seasoned industry veterans. All employees hold high-level industry and vendor certifications. We offer a comprehensive set of consulting and staff augmentation services, primarily focused on networking and security consulting in the classified space.