Senior Systems Software Engineer - Peripherals & Companion Products , San Mateo, CA

United States, San Mateo, CA

Why Play Station?

Play Station isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. Today, we’re recognized as a global leader in entertainment producing The Play Station family of products and services including Play Station®5, Play Station®4, Play Station®VR, Play Station®Plus, acclaimed Play Station software titles from Play Station Studios, and more.

Play Station also strives to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity. We welcome and encourage everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team.

The Play Station brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.

Location:
San Mateo, CA (hybrid)

Play Station seeks a Senior Systems Software Engineer to develop and improve the core systems software for Play Station peripherals and companion products. You will be part of a combined systems software and firmware engineering team. Collaboration with firmware engineers—and through them, hardware engineers—will be essential to create smooth, end-to-end device experiences. Your efforts will ensure peripherals function reliably across the Play Station ecosystem, including Play Station 5, Play Station Portal, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

This includes working on solutions that integrate Play Station Link.

• Build, implement, and maintain systems software components (drivers, low-level services/daemons, system utilities, and integration layers) that enable Play Station peripherals and companion products across console, PC, and mobile platforms.
• Work day-to-day with firmware engineers to define interfaces and debug cross-boundary issues. Deliver robust behaviors across pairing, connectivity, updates, and recovery flows. Partner closely with hardware engineering when root cause spans the full stack.
• Build platform integrations that support device discovery, connection management, device management features, and resilient error handling to ensure excellent real-world reliability.
• Develop and maintain diagnostics, logging/telemetry, and test hooks that accelerate root-cause analysis and improve product quality in the lab, manufacturing, and the field.
• Improve performance, latency, reliability, and power consumption for peripherals and companion workflows, with special attention to timing-sensitive device interactions.
• Collaborate with systems QA, operations, program management, and global software teams to ship high-quality releases.
• Produce clear build docs and technical proposals; participate in architecture reviews, code reviews, and release readiness.
• Mentor engineers and help raise the quality bar through pragmatic technical leadership and best-practice engineering habits.

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience with significant systems software (drivers, OS-adjacent services, platform integration, performance-sensitive components).
• Strong proficiency in C/C++; experience using Python or similar scripting languages for automation, tooling, and diagnostics.
• Experience releasing software on one or more of:
  Play Station/console platforms, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android—and interest in developing solutions that cover multiple platforms.
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across complex stacks (multi-threading, memory, timing/latency, device interactions); comfortable with profiling and tracing tools.
• Solid systems fundamentals: concurrency, IPC, resource management, reliability engineering, and quality-focused development practices.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills—able to work effectively across fields and time zones, and to align system-software needs with firmware and hardware constraints.

• Experience with peripherals/connectivity stacks (USB, Bluetooth, Wi‑Fi) and/or latency-sensitive pipelines (e.g., audio).
• Experience collaborating with firmware teams on device protocols, state machines, and update orchestration (from the system-software side).
• Familiarity with platform-specific frameworks…