System Software Engineering Lead; Firmware​/OS

Rivet is an American company building integrated task systems — fusing hardened hardware with software, sensors, AI, and networking — for industrial work forces and defense personnel. We create capabilities that multiply the effectiveness of every individual and withstand the world’s toughest environments.

We serve the people who build, operate, maintain, and defend our way of life. From technicians and engineers to first responders and service members, they embody the hard work, ingenuity, and meritocratic values that drive Western prosperity. Yet too often they are forced to rely on outdated tools that fail under modern pressures. Rivet exists to reset that priority.

At Rivet, you’ll join a mission-driven team that fuses disciplines to deliver decisive outcomes where they matter most. Whether shaping our technology, strengthening our partnerships, or building our culture, every role here contributes to equipping the front lines with the modern systems they deserve.

EOE

Work Authorization Requirement:
Due to the nature of our business and compliance with federal regulations, all candidates must be a "U.S. Person". Upon hire, you will be required to provide documentation verifying your status as a U.S. Citizen, a lawful permanent resident, or a protected individual under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).

Role:
Lead Systems Software Engineer

Location:
San Jose or Washington D.C.

Role Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience building and maintaining Android and/or Linux system-level code and framework extensions (AOSP, custom ROMs, HALs, device drivers, kernel configuration) in an enterprise environment.
• Strong software architecture fundamentals with the ability to design systems that are secure, scalable, extensible, and robust.
• Experience with networking fundamentals and low-latency communication protocols, both IPC and RPC (e.g., gRPC, protobuf, AIDL, libzmq).
• Experience integrating custom hardware and peripherals into Android and Linux environments.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for system image generation, AOSP builds, and firmware packaging.
• Familiarity with automated testing strategies for embedded and system-level software, including hardware-in-the-loop and integration testing.
• Experience with OTA update infrastructure, including image delivery, staged rollouts, and rollback mechanisms.
• Familiarity with secure boot, TPM, certificate chains, system integrity verification, and other low-level security primitives.
• A security-first mindset with practical experience hardening real-world systems.
• Experience working on devices and systems with resource constraints (thermal, power, compute).
• Effective communication and collaboration across engineering disciplines.

• Experience with defense-related security frameworks and protocols (ITAR, security classifications, STIG, encryption).
• Distributed systems experience, including service discovery, health monitoring, fault tolerance, and graceful degradation across multi-node systems.

Role

Description:

As a Lead Systems Software Engineer, y ou'll work with a team of committed engineers to build the foundation of our device platform - from the OS layer to secure containers and lightweight services. You will own the core pieces of Android and Linux systems that scale across resource-constrained, multi-node environments.

Role Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain system-level platform code across Android and Linux, including AOSP customizations, system services, init processes, and kernel modules.
• Architect scalable, extensible, secure, and robust systems. Lead a team to execute on those designs as requirements evolve.
• Develop and maintain Linux-based services for inter-device communications, message queuing, and observability…