Principal Software Developer (C )

📋 Description

• • Architect and deliver the next generation of UAV-based geophysics software that turns raw aerial sensor data into actionable intelligence within minutes of landing. You will own the full lifecycle—from whiteboard sketches to production-grade C++ and Python modules—ensuring every line of code can withstand the rigors of field campaigns across the Canadian North and beyond.
• • Design and implement high-throughput data pipelines capable of ingesting multi-gigabyte geophysical datasets (magnetics, radiometrics, EM) streamed from drones in real time. Your solutions will leverage lock-free queues, SIMD intrinsics, and GPU kernels to achieve sub-second latency while running on ruggedized edge computers.
• • Build semi-automated workflow engines that reduce manual QC time by 80 %. These engines will orchestrate ingestion, preprocessing, anomaly flagging, statistical correction, and auto-generated PDF reports—freeing geophysicists to focus on interpretation rather than data wrangling.
• • Integrate advanced signal-processing algorithms (Kalman filtering, FFT-based spectral analysis, wavelet denoising) and lightweight ML models for anomaly detection directly into the flight software. You will tune these algorithms for real-time execution on ARM64 and x86_64 architectures, balancing accuracy against power and thermal constraints.
• • Optimize multi-threaded, parallelized, and eventually distributed processing stacks. Expect to profile cache hierarchies, eliminate false sharing, and exploit NUMA architectures so that a single 32-core workstation can process an entire day’s survey in under an hour.
• • Collaborate shoulder-to-shoulder with geophysicists, data scientists, UAV pilots, and hardware engineers in Kanata’s state-of-the-art lab and in the field. You will translate geophysical domain knowledge into clean APIs, ensuring seamless integration between sensor payloads, autopilot systems, and cloud analytics.
• • Implement rigorous QA/QC automation that continuously validates datasets against integrity thresholds, flags sensor drift, and guarantees reproducibility across firmware versions. Your test harnesses will run in CI pipelines, spinning up Docker containers that mimic flight hardware.
• • Extend the on-board software to perform edge preprocessing—compressing, georeferencing, and prioritizing data for burst transmission over LTE or Starlink links—so that critical anomalies can be triaged before the UAV even lands.
• • Champion modern DevOps practices: containerized microservices, Kubernetes orchestration, feature flags, and blue-green deployments. You will mentor junior developers on clean C++17/20, Pythonic design, and Git workflows that scale across continents.
• • Contribute to open-source geospatial libraries (GDAL, PROJ, PDAL) when the community benefits align with project goals. Your commits will be seen—and reviewed—by thousands of developers worldwide.
• • Drive continuous improvement through post-mission analytics, A/B testing algorithm variants, and feeding field performance metrics back into the development backlog. Your dashboards will visualize throughput, accuracy, and battery trade-offs in real time.
• • Shape the technical roadmap for 2025–2027, influencing decisions on FPGA vs. GPU acceleration, cloud vs. edge partitioning, and adoption of emerging standards like DDS for sensor interoperability. Your voice will matter at every level of the company.