Edge Operating System Engineer

About the Company

We are a stealth-mode Aerospace & Defense startup headquartered in Gardena, CA. Our founding team hails from SpaceX, Anduril, and Lockheed Martin, and we are backed by Joint Staff-level military leadership and several Silicon Valley firms. With a world-class business development & leadership team already in place, we are well positioned to capitalize on already overwhelming demand.

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer focused on Edge Operating Systems to own the low-level software stack powering our NVIDIA Orin NX-based flight computer. In this role, you’ll be responsible for architecting and maintaining our custom NixOS-based deployment and configuration pipeline, building high-reliability Linux systems optimized for flight, and integrating performance-critical applications into a secure, deterministic edge compute environment. If you thrive at the intersection of embedded systems, Linux internals, and reproducible builds—and want your work to directly shape national defense—this is your role.

Responsibilities

• Own image lifecycle for our flight computers, from hardware bring-up to mission deployment
• Build secure, minimal, reproducible NixOS configurations for NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX
• Optimize performance, boot time, and reliability for mission-critical deployments
• Integrate low-level software components (GStreamer, CUDA, GPU drivers, telemetry, real-time threads) into a cohesive system
• Work closely with flight software and GNC teams to support real-time, multi-process workloads
• Develop secure update mechanisms, sandboxing, and observability tools for edge devices in hostile environments
• Lead debugging and performance analysis efforts across user space, kernel space, and hardware interfaces
• Contribute to devops and CI pipelines for embedded Linux builds and simulation environments

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field
• 5+ years of experience building or maintaining embedded Linux systems (Yocto, Buildroot, NixOS, or similar)
• Deep familiarity with Linux internals: systemd, udev, bootloaders (e.g., U-Boot), networking, filesystems
• Fluency in shell scripting and programming in Python, Rust, or C
• Hands-on experience with NVIDIA Jetson platforms, including GPU and camera stack integration
• Experience debugging kernel-space and user-space issues on embedded targets

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree or research experience in operating systems, embedded systems, or security
• Experience using Nix/NixOS in production for embedded or robotics systems
• Familiarity with secure boot, TPMs, cryptographic key management, and OTA update systems
• Knowledge of CUDA, GStreamer, or other high-performance Linux subsystems
• Prior work on autonomous systems, aerospace, or other safety-critical domains
• Contributions to open source operating systems or Nix community projects

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C.1157, or (iv) Asylum under 8 U.S.C.1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.