Senior Software Engineer, Embedded Platform

Senior Software Engineer, Embedded Platform

About Bonsai Robotics

Bonsai Robotics develops affordable, vision-based autonomy that makes off-road equipment smarter, safer, and more productive. We are redefining outdoor autonomy with Bonsai Intelligence, a connected platform that’s inspired by biology to see, think, and act with precision like a human. We bring together advanced perception, embodied AI, integrations with equipment manufacturers, and our compact, modular Amiga vehicles to deliver reliable automation to the world’s most demanding field operations—reducing costs and increasing operational efficiencies.

About the role

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Embedded Platform to own the embedded Linux platform that keeps our fleet running in the field. Our machines operate in orchards and row crops far from the office, on intermittent connectivity, and they need to be updated, configured, monitored, and debugged remotely. This role owns that end to end: the Yocto-based operating system image, the over-the-air update path, fleet configuration and provisioning, and the observability infrastructure that tells us what every machine is doing.

The ideal candidate is a Linux systems engineer who is comfortable from the boot loader up to a cloud dashboard, and who treats "we had to drive out to the field to fix it" as a bug.

What you'll do

• Own over-the-air (OTA) updates end to end across the fleet — image build and signing, staged rollout, rollback and failure recovery, and update delivery to both Linux compute modules and CAN-connected embedded controllers.
• Own fleet management infrastructure — device identity and provisioning, hierarchical configuration and secrets management, remote access, and an accurate live picture of what software every machine is running.
• Build the observability stack for a distributed fleet — on-robot telemetry, metrics, logs, and health signals flowing to the cloud, with dashboards and alerting that surface failures before a customer calls.
• Own the OS layer — Yocto-based BSP maintenance, kernel and device tree configuration, system services, boot and recovery paths, and reproducible image builds across multiple compute platforms.
• Design and maintain build and release infrastructure for embedded targets — cross-compilation, CI/CD, artifact management, and release pipelines that make deploying to a live machine routine rather than an event.
• Partner with the firmware, autonomy, and field operations teams to define integration and release requirements across multiple robot form factors.
• As an early platform engineer at a growing team, expect to work outside this scope regularly — bringing up new hardware, unblocking a field deployment, or building whatever tooling the team needs next.

Qualifications

• Strong computer science fundamentals and systems fluency
• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, with 5+ years of industry experience in embedded Linux, infrastructure, or robotics platform engineering
• Strong proficiency in Rust, C/C++, and Python
• Experience building or operating embedded Linux distributions with Yocto/Open Embedded, Buildroot, or a custom BSP, including kernel and device tree work
• Hands-on experience with OTA update systems (Mender, RAUC, SWUpdate, OSTree, balena, or equivalent) including A/B partitioning, atomic updates, and rollback
• Fleet device management at scale — provisioning, remote configuration, secrets distribution, and remote access to devices behind NAT or on cellular links
• Observability and monitoring infrastructure (Prometheus, Grafana, Open Telemetry, or similar) applied to intermittently connected edge devices
• CI/CD, containerization, and cross-compilation for ARM
  64 embedded targets
• Cloud infrastructure experience (AWS or equivalent) and infrastructure-as-code
• Strong debugging instincts across the whole stack, from a kernel log on a machine in a field to a cloud metrics pipeline, with the ability to work independently and collaboratively

Exceptional Candidates Will Also Bring

• Embedded firmware programming — bare metal or RTOS development, and hardware bring-up on custom boards
• CAN bus systems…