Staff Embedded Linux Software Engineer
SirenOpt
About the role
About SirenOpt
SirenOpt helps manufacturers make better, safer, and more reliable micro- and nano-materials. These materials are the building blocks of critical sectors of the global economy such as batteries, computer chips, aircraft components, and power systems. But, surging material demand and growing complexity are pushing production to unprecedented scales and speeds, leaving manufacturers effectively flying blind. Small, undetected variations during production lead to wastage, lower performance, higher costs, and safety risks.
SirenOpt is changing this by developing a manufacturing intelligence platform that non-destructively probes materials during production, revealing critical internal information without damaging them. Using a novel combination of cold atmospheric plasma, physics-informed machine learning, and predictive analytics, SirenOpt generates unique, real-time material fingerprints that capture material signals not accessible through conventional measurement techniques. These insights give manufacturers unprecedented visibility into how materials behave as they are made.
We turn hidden data into actionable intelligence to help manufacturers reduce variability and thus increase yield and performance. The technology can be deployed as a standalone tool or integrated directly into factory production lines. SirenOpt is currently deploying early versions of its platform with some of the largest industrial manufacturers in the world across North America, Europe, and Asia.
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
Responsibilities
- Develop embedded Linux application software and userspace and kernel-space drivers.
- Implement command, control, and data protocols over TCP/IP, serial, and CAN interfaces.
- Build hardware-in-the-loop test systems and host-side Python test tools.
- Establish CI/CD pipelines and reproducible build infrastructure.
- Support hardware bring-up, board validation, and lab debugging.
- Contribute to architecture decisions, documentation, and design reviews.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's, master's, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field.
- 10+ years of relevant industry experience.
- Experience with embedded Linux C, POSIX APIs, threading, and IPC.
- Python test automation experience with pytest or an equivalent framework.
- Experience with Linux TCP/IP and UDP socket programming.
- Knowledge of UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, RS-232, and RS-485 protocols.
- Experience with hardware bring-up, board-level debugging, and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
- Familiarity with real-time data flow patterns such as producer-consumer and ring buffers.
Benefits
- Health, dental, and vision plans
- 401(k) matching
- 20 days of PTO per year
- Approximately 15 paid US holidays per year
- Equity compensation
Skills mentioned
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. PlasmaSens combines cold atmospheric plasma with physics-informed machine learning to analyze materials non-destructively and in real time. PlasmaSens reveals critical surface and internal characteristics that conventional methods miss, creating a distinctive fingerprint for every material. Manufacturers use these fingerprints to detect variability earlier, improve process control, and increase yield and performance. 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 already deployed multiple PlasmaSens products with customers and collaborators across the United States, Japan, Germany, and Taiwan. For employment opportunities please visit our careers page: https://www.sirenopt.com/careers
H-1B sponsorship history
Historical employer filing data was found for SirenOpt. The employer record includes 3 historical certified applications. This is employer-level history, not a guarantee that this role currently offers sponsorship.