Embedded Systems Engineer

Aurelius Systems•San Francisco, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Aurelius Systems is a VC-backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge-deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones. We are a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. We are building the first cost-effective, reliable, and robust laser weapon system. Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable. In addition to our San Francisco lab, we’ve opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range. We need an Embedded Systems Engineer to own the layer between hardware and the application stack — board bring-up, BSP, drivers, and real-time control across Archimedes' subsystems. You'll work directly with EE, mechanical, and our robotics software team to make sure the system actually talks to itself under field conditions.

Requirements

3 to 8+ years building embedded systems on real hardware
Strong C and C++ on Linux, plus comfort with Python for tooling
Hands on Linux kernel, driver, and BSP experience on at least one custom board
Real-time systems experience including PREEMPT_RT, Xenomai, or RTOS
Comfortable debugging at the hardware level with scope and logic analyzer
BS or MS in EE, CE, CS, or equivalent hands-on experience.
Extreme bias for action. You ship working code on real hardware, not slideware
You debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
Clear communicator across electrical, mechanical, optical, and software teams
Self directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told

Nice To Haves

Yocto or Buildroot
ROS2 integration
Safety-critical or hard real-time experience
CAN, EtherCAT, or industrial bus experience

Responsibilities

Board bring-up and BSP development on custom hardware
Linux kernel and driver work including device drivers, DMA, interrupts, and userspace interfaces
Real-time control loops for motion, power, and sensor subsystems
Hardware and software co-design alongside EEs and mechanical engineers
Debug at the metal using oscilloscope, logic analyzer, JTAG, and bus traces
Boot, flash, and update infrastructure for embedded targets including A/B partitions and OTA