Senior Embedded Linux Software Engineer – C++/Python
Client: Autonomous Vehicle / Technology
Title: Engineer- Linux Application Engineer
Job Location: Foster City, CA (At least 3 days per week)
Duration: ~6 Months
Pay Rate: $103.45-$123.59/HR W2 (The hourly pay rate is commensurate with experience and is an estimated rate provided by WorkGenius.)
Role Overview
We are seeking an experienced Linux Application Engineer to join a Software Engineering organization focused on developing the application framework and software architecture for next-generation vehicle platforms. This position will play a key role in building, enhancing, and supporting high-performance embedded Linux applications and services used across future vehicle programs and production deployments.
The engineer will work closely with software, platform, infrastructure, hardware, and vehicle engineering teams to solve complex system integration challenges, investigate issues discovered during vehicle testing, and improve application and system performance across evolving hardware architectures.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, enhance, and maintain embedded Linux applications and services for next-generation in-vehicle platforms.
- Help drive the development and evolution of application architecture with a strong emphasis on reliability, security, scalability, and performance.
- Design and implement reliable, scalable interfaces between applications, platform-level services, and core vehicle systems.
- Develop new product functionality while diagnosing and resolving critical software issues discovered through vehicle and system testing.
- Measure, benchmark, and optimize performance across CPU, GPU, memory utilization, I/O, application startup, and overall system latency.
- Investigate performance constraints and system bottlenecks and recommend software- and architecture-level improvements.
- Support software bring-up, system integration, production readiness, and deployment activities across new hardware platforms.
- Diagnose and resolve complex integration problems, including native application crashes, system-level failures, resource contention, and multi-component software issues.
- Develop and improve observability capabilities, including diagnostics, logging, monitoring, and automated system health frameworks.
- Collaborate across application software, hardware, infrastructure, platform, and vehicle engineering organizations to resolve cross-functional technical challenges.
- Define, implement, and promote engineering best practices related to software development, testing, security, code quality, and release management.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- 8+ years of relevant professional software or systems engineering experience.
- Strong programming skills in C++ and Python, with hands-on experience developing applications in Linux environments.
- Demonstrated experience building applications and services for embedded Linux systems.
- Strong understanding of multithreading, inter-process communication (IPC), networking protocols, memory management, and process lifecycle management.
- Experience diagnosing native crashes and troubleshooting complex integrations involving multiple software components.
- Proficiency with Linux debugging and performance analysis tools such as perf, GDB, Valgrind, or comparable technologies.
- Ability to evaluate and troubleshoot system performance across CPU, GPU, memory, I/O, application latency, and thermal metrics.
- Experience integrating complex software components developed by internal engineering organizations and/or external technology partners.
- Understanding of Linux security concepts, service management, software packaging, and software update mechanisms.
- Experience with embedded systems testing practices and automated testing frameworks.
- Strong collaboration and communication skills with the ability to work hands-on across multiple technical disciplines.
Preferred Qualifications
- Previous experience within the automotive industry, particularly involving vehicle software or in-vehicle infotainment systems.
- Experience developing or integrating software within hypervisor-based or multi-operating-system architectures.
- Familiarity with graphics technologies such as Vulkan, OpenGL, or other GPU-accelerated application frameworks.
- Experience implementing or working with enterprise-scale telemetry, diagnostics, monitoring, and observability systems.
- Hands-on experience bringing up and integrating Linux applications on newly developed hardware platforms.
