Flight Operations Support Engineer

Pyka is looking for a Flight Operations Support Engineer to join our expanding Flight Operations team, guarantee maximum operational uptime of our fleet, and inform data-driven design decisions.

This role is split between on-call rotations 50% of the time, where the primary responsibility is to remotely troubleshoot, diagnose and resolve the fleet’s complex hardware/software-related issues. The rotations cover regular work hours, with an additional “after-hours” rotation per week. 

The rest of time, you will drive the investigation and permanent resolution of the uncovered issues, interfacing with cross-functional engineering teams, analyzing data and designing additional tests. Additionally, your feedback to engineering teams will be crucial to prioritize work on the most critical problems.

This is a multidisciplinary role that interacts with many internal teams, so written and verbal communication skills are critical. Your work will be instrumental in Pyka’s growth as we build the best safe product for our customers.

As an integral part of the Flight Operations team, you will spend your first three weeks training as a Flight Test Engineer in one of our test sites in California. Then, in your first three months, you will:

• Support our local Flight Test teams and customers during your on-call rotations
• Analyze data of aircraft subsystems to support failure root cause analysis
• Analyze bench and flight testing data to validate new design
• Perform initial triage of software and hardware related field issues

• Remotely and timely troubleshoot fleet issues and make decisions to guarantee maximum fleet up-time
• Support customer operations in off-hours once per week
• Identify and escalate trends in fleet performance and issues
• Analyze flight logs to identify and troubleshoot hardware and software issues
• Establishing diagnostic procedures and maintain a test/troubleshooting guide
• Depending on the candidate, additional responsibilities may include:
• Develop flight software to address bugs, control issues or implement new autopilot features
• Develop software to automate analysis or reporting
• Design test and test fixtures to validate new hardware  

• Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or Information Technology
• 1-3+ years experience with software-controlled hardware
• Experience with Linux and git
• Experience with software development: comfortable reading and amending code
• Talent and excitement for thorough troubleshooting
• Excellent communication skills, ability to build relationships across the company
• Independent and motivated, with an extremely strong work ethic; able to self-direct and manage time

• Experience with C++
• Experience building data analysis tools in Python
• Experience with electric autonomous aircraft
• Experience with remotely supporting vehicle troubleshooting
• Experience with hardware testing and validation processes
• Hands-on experience with vehicle hardware

• $90,000–$130,000 per year base salary + equity. Compensation will vary depending on location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Salary ranges are subject to change.
• Employer-sponsored health, dental and vision insurance
• FSA with employer matching
• 401(k)
• Paid holidays, generous PTO, and additional unpaid time off
• Voluntary short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance
• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• Free catered lunch and plenty of snacks in our headquarters

Export Control Requirements

This position requires access to technology, software and other information that is subject to governmental access control restrictions, due to export controls.  Employment in this position is conditioned on the continued availability of government authorization to authorize release of such items, to the extent required, including without limitation an export license, or other documentation required to establish authorization to receive access to such items. 

Company may delay commencement of employment, rescind an offer of employment, terminate employment, and/or may modify job responsibilities, compensation, benefits, and/or access to Company facilities and information systems, as Company deems appropriate, in order to ensure compliance with applicable government access control restrictions.

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We do not work with external recruiters; if you are an external recruiter, please do not reach out.