Staff Embedded Linux Software Engineer

About SirenOpt

At SirenOpt®, we are building the manufacturing intelligence layer for advanced materials. We help manufacturers visualize, understand, and control the material behavior that determines yield, performance, and safety across energy, aerospace, automotive, electronics, and semiconductor applications. 

We are working on this problem because advanced materials are becoming more critical and more complex, but the tools used to manufacture them have not kept pace. Manufacturers still lack real-time visibility into the small variations that shape quality on the line. We care because those invisible variations cause scrap, waste energy and materials, create higher costs, inconsistent product performance, and introduce avoidable safety risks. 

We developed PlasmaSens™, our manufacturing intelligence platform, to close that visibility gap and to lay the foundation for truly autonomous manufacturing. 

We are uniquely suited to solve this problem because our expertise and our platform connect material science, plasma physics, machine learning, and manufacturing in one system.  The same core technology works in-line, at-line, and off-line, and across form factors ranging from electrodes and wafers to 3D components. That flexibility lets us meet manufacturers where they are and carry insight from the lab into mass production. 

We have deployed multiple PlasmaSens products with customers and collaborators across the United States, Japan, Germany, and Taiwan.  We pair that real-world experience with support from leading US, European, and Japanese venture investors, the National Science Foundation, the California Energy Commission, and the Department of Energy.  Our combination of differentiated technology, manufacturing experience, and global scientific and industry partnerships gives us the foundation to solve material variability at scale. 

About the job

Job Title: Staff Embedded Linux Software Engineer — Firmware Team

Location: On-Site (San Leandro, CA)

Job Type: Full-Time

Role Overview

SirenOpt is seeking an Embedded Linux Software Engineer to join a small, high-impact firmware team building the embedded software stack for a commercial bench-top scientific instrument. The platform is an AMD/Xilinx FPGA SoC (Zynq / UltraScale+) running PetaLinux, with a mix of userspace applications, device drivers, and real-time control interfacing with custom programmable logic.

You’ll work alongside an embedded systems architect who owns the Linux application layer, peripheral subsystems, protocol design, and hardware integration. Your core mandate is threefold: share the Linux application workload, own test automation infrastructure, and establish CI/build reliability. You’ll write production code and the tooling that proves it works.

This is a small, documentation-driven team, and you’ll be expected to write clear design docs and track progress in Jira/Confluence. The role combines hands-on lab work with prototype hardware and desk-based software development, following a sequenced release cadence (HDL → OS/drivers → embedded applications → system integration).

What You'll Do

• Develop embedded Linux application software in C (userspace, POSIX)
• Develop userspace and kernel-space drivers for internal and external devices (sensors, actuators, instruments)
• Implement and extend application-level command/control/data protocols over TCP/IP
• Implement communication drivers for industrial instruments (mass flow controllers, vacuum gauges, motor controllers) over serial and CAN interfaces
• Design, build, and maintain hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) automated test systems
• Develop host-side test tooling (Python GUIs, emulators, scripted instrument drivers)
• Establish and maintain CI/CD pipelines and reproducible build infrastructure
• Participate in hardware bring-up, board-level validation, and lab bench debugging
• Contribute to architecture decisions, documentation, and design reviews

What We're Looking For

• S., M.S., or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field, with 10+ years of relevant industry experience
• C for embedded Linux userspace, including threading, IPC, and POSIX APIs
• Python for test automation (pytest or equivalent framework) and scripted instrumentation
• TCP/IP socket programming on Linux (non-blocking I/O, connection lifecycle, streaming)
• UDP for discovery and lightweight telemetry
• Bus and serial protocols: UART, SPI, I2C, and CAN
• RS-232 and RS-485, including byte-level protocol implementation (framing, CRC, state machines, multi-device arbitration)
• Hardware bring-up and board-level debugging using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and protocol analyzers
• Producer-consumer and ring buffer patterns for real-time data flow
• Hardware-in-the-loop test development and execution

Nice to have:

• Linux DMA programming (scatter-gather, buffer pool management, AXI-DMA)
• CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Docker-based build environments)
• Yocto or PetaLinux BSP experience
• Unit test frameworks for C (gtest, cmocka, Unity)
• Familiarity with FPGA register interfaces (UIO, devmem, register maps)
• Performance profiling and network analysis (Wireshark, throughput characterization)
• Python GUI development for test/operator tooling (Tkinter, PyQt)
• Familiarity with scientific or process-control instrumentation

Base Pay Range$180,000—$240,000 USD

Benefits

• Equity and Salary compensation depends on experience 
• Health, Dental, Vision plans provided
• 401k matching provided
• Time off: 20 days of PTO per year, plus approximately 15 paid US holidays per year