Senior Embedded Linux Engineer
$165,000–$231,000 year
On-siteTorrance, California, United States
Job Summary
Own the embedded Linux platform distribution, kernel, bootloader, and SDK used by flight, ground-station, and autonomy teams. Manage board support packages via Yocto or Buildroot, handling board bring-up from power-on to production-ready images and configuring device drivers with secure boot paths. Design common runtime libraries for logging, telemetry, and IPC while maintaining the cross-compile toolchain. Establish Linux platform best practices and mentor engineers across teams building on the foundation. Requires deep embedded Linux experience with kernel-level competence, strong C skills, and a platform-as-product mindset. US salary range $165,000–$231,000.
Required Qualifications
- Deep embedded Linux experience — you have built and shipped products on custom Linux images (Yocto or Buildroot), owning the image rather than just using it
- Kernel-level competence: device drivers, device tree, and debugging kernel or boot failures on real hardware
- Bootloader experience (U-Boot or similar), including secure boot concepts and safe update/recovery design
- Strong C, comfortable on both sides of the kernel/user space boundary
- scripting (Python/shell) for platform tooling
- Board bring-up experience — taking a new SoC/SoM from schematic review to a booting, stable OS
- Platform-as-product mindset: you have designed libraries, SDKs, or interfaces consumed by other teams — and kept them stable while the platform evolved underneath
Desired Qualifications
- Radio/comms integration on embedded Linux
- Real-time tuning — PREEMPT_RT, latency analysis
- OTA/update systems — Mender, RAUC, SWUpdate, OSTree, or homegrown equivalents
- Upstream contributions — kernel, Yocto/OpenEmbedded, U-Boot
- Rust for systems work
- You fly — FPV, RC, or drones generally
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