Senior Embedded Software Engineer, Linux

Relativity Space•Long Beach, CA

5h•$154,000 - $230,000

About The Position

Relativity Space is building rockets to serve today’s needs and tomorrow’s breakthroughs. The Terran R vehicle will deliver customer payloads to orbit, meeting the growing demand for launch capacity. Joining Relativity means becoming part of something where autonomy, ownership, and impact exist at every level. The Vehicle Software team develops the safety-critical software that runs on Terran R. The work spans a distributed, real-time control system operating under extreme conditions like Mach 5 atmospheric flight, with a deployment pace that allows you to see your code run on rocket engines daily. The team is building new system architecture from the ground up and just as importantly, testing, releasing, and deploying it. This is a rare opportunity to shape the foundation of Terran R’s software stack while directly influencing performance, reliability, and flight success. As an Embedded Linux Software Engineer, you will be a key member of our embedded software team responsible for developing, testing, and documenting firmware that gets deployed to all avionics boxes throughout our rocket vehicles. In this role, you'll develop embedded Linux software for network switch and camera platforms, creating production-grade applications and system services that power real-world devices deployed at scale. You'll focus on the integration of networking, video, and hardware interfaces, implementing software that interacts directly with hardware peripherals, networking subsystems, and video pipelines running on embedded SoCs. Working closely with hardware, systems, and platform teams, you'll lead system bring-up and platform integration efforts for new hardware, debug complex issues across the full stack from hardware and kernel to drivers and application layers and participate in validation and performance tuning. This position offers the opportunity to contribute to software architecture improvements, maintain high-performance and reliable code, and support critical testing and troubleshooting activities in both lab and field environments as we build aerospace technology that flies.

Requirements

5+ years of experience developing software for embedded systems
Strong programming skills in C/C++
Experience developing applications on embedded Linux platforms
Experience debugging using tools such as gdb, strace, perf, tcpdump, etc.
Familiarity with Linux networking and system programming
Experience working with cross-compiled systems and build systems
Strong debugging skills across hardware and software boundaries

Nice To Haves

Experience with camera pipelines, video processing, or multimedia frameworks
Experience with network switching, routing, or networking protocols
Familiarity with low-level embedded development (MCU, RTOS, or bare-metal)
Experience with hardware bring-up and board support package
Experience with Yocto or similar Linux build systems
Experience developing or modifying Linux device drivers
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing for embedded systems

Responsibilities

Develop embedded Linux software for network switch and camera platforms.
Create production-grade applications and system services.
Focus on the integration of networking, video, and hardware interfaces.
Implement software that interacts directly with hardware peripherals, networking subsystems, and video pipelines running on embedded SoCs.
Lead system bring-up and platform integration efforts for new hardware.
Debug complex issues across the full stack from hardware and kernel to drivers and application layers.
Participate in validation and performance tuning.
Contribute to software architecture improvements.
Maintain high-performance and reliable code.
Support critical testing and troubleshooting activities in both lab and field environments.