Systems Software Engineer; Linux

My client is an Austin based, start‑up applied AI company building autonomous robotic and drone systems for defense and national security clients. The team is small and technically deep — engineers work across the full stack, from hardware bring‑up to system integration to production software.

This role will build and integrate software for robotic platforms operating in complex, real‑world environments — connecting Linux‑based software systems to physical sensors, cameras, radios, and compute modules. The work spans hardware bring‑up through production deployment, with close collaboration across electrical, mechanical, and robotics engineering teams.

• Develop and integrate software for Linux‑based robotic and embedded systems
• Integrate hardware components — sensors, cameras, radios, compute modules, peripheral devices
• Design and maintain interfaces between software services, hardware devices, and middleware
• Build communication interfaces using IPC mechanisms and hardware communication protocols
• Support hardware bring‑up, software validation, and system integration
• Debug and troubleshoot complex system‑level software and hardware integration issues
• Optimise software for performance, reliability, and maintainability
• Collaborate with electrical, mechanical, and robotics engineers to deliver complete systems
• Support simulation, HIL testing, field testing, and customer deployments
• Contribute to software architecture and system design discussions
• Occasional travel for field testing, customer engagements, and team meetings

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field
• Strong C++ and Python programming experience in production environments
• Experience integrating software with hardware systems (sensors, cameras, actuators, embedded boards)
• Experience with hardware bring‑up, system integration, and platform validation
• Multi‑threaded and/or multi‑process application development
• IPC mechanisms: sockets, shared memory, message passing
• Hardware communication protocols:
  Ethernet, CAN, USB, UART, SPI, I2C
• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills across software and hardware layers
• Ability to work effectively within multidisciplinary engineering teams

• Robotics or autonomous systems background
• RTOS or embedded Linux (Yocto, Buildroot)
• Experience in defense, national security, or government‑adjacent contexts
• Hardware‑in‑the‑loop (HIL) testing experience

• Systems thinker: comfortable holding the full picture across SW and HW
• Pragmatic: builds for reliability and maintainability, not just proof‑of‑concept
• Comfortable with ambiguity and the pace of a small, technically deep team
• Willingness to own problems end‑to‑end — bring‑up to deployment