AeroVect - Staff Platform Engineer

Remote - USA2mo ago

Remote Staff NA Semiconductors Robotics Platform Engineer C++Python Linux Reporting Git

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience developing Linux-based embedded or robotics platforms. • Built a platform from 0→1 at a robotics/AV company that scaled through at least one order of magnitude in fleet size. • Demonstrated ability to lead technically across multiple teams without direct reports — aligning autonomy, perception, and hardware stakeholders on a shared platform direction. • Demonstrated experience growing senior engineers and raising engineering standards (design review, code review, on-call practices, post-mortems). • Expert-level C++ (≥C++17) and strong Python, with deep instincts for which language belongs where in a real-time system. • Deep, first-hand experience shipping real-time, safety-critical systems — Avionics, AV/ADAS, or comparable domains — not just general embedded Linux. • Deep knowledge of IPC middlewares and techniques on Linux/POSIX systems. • Expert-level real-time performance tuning and profiling (perf, eBPF, ftrace/LTTng), and the judgment to know when to reach for each. • Experience with Git, Docker/OCI containers, and the CI/CD patterns appropriate for OS images and signed artifacts. • Fluency with the common buses and protocols of a sensor-heavy vehicle (USB, Ethernet/TSN, CAN, PCIe, SPI, I2C). • Experience with functional safety workflows (ISO 26262, MISRA, SOTIF) or a credible path to owning that work for us. • Experience with Nvidia Orin/Thor platforms and heterogeneous compute scheduling. • We Prefer • Prior work on autonomous vehicles, drones, or other safety-critical robotic systems. • Experience with ptp4l and TSN configurations in complex multi-sensor systems. • Experience with QNX or other RTOS, and the judgment on when Linux is and isn't enough. • Deep knowledge of Linux/Yocto systems: package management, systemd, networking, and kernel configuration including PREEMPT_RT or equivalent real-time patches. • Familiarity with GPU acceleration frameworks (CUDA, Vulkan). • Open-source contributions to relevant projects (Linux kernel, ROS 2, DDS implementations, Yocto layers) or equivalent public technical work (talks, papers, standards participation). • Comfort working in a fast-paced startup environment and supporting field deployments at airports or other industrial sites.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision and multi-year roadmap for the platform, including how we evolve from today's fleet to the next order-of-magnitude in scale, sensor count, and autonomy maturity. • Own the future architecture of our Ubuntu/Yocto/Linux distributions tailored for real-time, safety-critical autonomous vehicle workloads, and make the build-vs-buy decisions that follow. • Set the strategy for ROS 2 IPC middleware (Cyclone DDS, Fast DDS, Zenoh, etc.) across the fleet — including profile selection, QoS standards, and determinism budgets for multi-sensor data flows. • Lead development of user-space drivers for LiDARs, cameras, radars, GNSS/INS, CAN, and other vehicle interfaces, and set the standards other engineers follow when adding new hardware. • Own the platform's functional safety and security strategy end-to-end — secure boot, OTA update pipelines, CVE response, and alignment with ISO 26262 / SOTIF workflows as we mature toward production. • Define the observability contract for the platform: what "healthy" looks like in the lab and in the field, and the SLIs/SLOs the autonomy and perception teams can build against. • Collaborating with autonomy, perception, and controls leads to set cross-stack performance budgets (CPU, GPU, memory, bus bandwidth, end-to-end latency) and drive the cross-team work to hit them. • Set standards for how the platform is built, tested, and released — CI/CD for OS images and driver packages, hardware-in-the-loop testing, release gates, and rollback strategy. • Contribute to the platform team's technical hiring and calibration — own the interview rubric, grow senior engineers into tech leads, and raise the bar on code review and design review across the team. • Represent AeroVect technically in relationships with silicon, sensor, and middleware vendors, and influence their roadmaps where it matters to us. • Provide on-call escalation support for platform components during field trials and customer pilots, and use what you learn in the field to drive systemic fixes. • Identify strategic technical debt and drive it down — not just within the platform, but stack-wide.