Software Engineer, Linux Kernel / Android

Rivet Industries•San Jose, CA

About The Position

Rivet is an American company building integrated task systems that combine hardened hardware with software, sensors, AI, and networking for industrial workforces and defense personnel. The Software Engineer, Linux Kernel / Android will build and maintain the low-level platform stack for Rivet’s body-worn and field-deployed devices, including AR/XR soldier systems that integrate real-time sensor fusion with display and compute pipelines running on Android and embedded Linux. This hands-on individual contributor role focuses on kernel, BSP, AOSP, HALs, drivers, and board bring-up. The engineer will integrate hardware, debug issues across the system stack, and deliver reliable, secure, and power-efficient platform software suited to the SWaP, thermal, and ruggedization constraints of field-deployed defense hardware. The role works closely with hardware, electrical, sensor-fusion/AR, software, mechanical, and systems engineers. Candidates must be a U.S. Person and, if required for the role, able to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance. Upon hire, documentation verifying U.S. Person status is required. Compensation may vary based on relevant experience, skills, education, and other job-related factors. The role may be eligible for equity and other forms of compensation. Eligible employees receive a competitive benefits package, including unlimited PTO.

Requirements

At least 3 years of experience developing system-level software for Android and/or Linux-based devices.
Strong experience with Linux kernel development, configuration, debugging, or integration.
Experience with Android/AOSP, including platform customization, HALs, system services, device configuration, or framework components.
Experience developing or integrating device drivers and interfacing with custom hardware and peripherals.
Experience with board bring-up and debugging hardware/software boundary issues.
Strong C/C++ programming skills and familiarity with low-level debugging and development tools.
Understanding of Linux boot processes, device trees, kernel configuration, memory management, and system initialization.
Experience building Android/Linux system images and working with embedded build systems.
Familiarity with hardware interfaces and protocols such as USB, MIPI, I2C, UART, GPIO, and PCIe.
Ability to diagnose complex system-level issues using logs, traces, debuggers, and hardware instrumentation.
Familiarity with embedded software testing and hardware-in-the-loop or system integration testing.
Working knowledge of secure boot, system integrity, and other platform security mechanisms.
Comfort working collaboratively with engineers across software, electrical, mechanical, and systems disciplines.
Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance, if required for the role.
Must be a U.S. Person and provide documentation verifying that status upon hire.

Nice To Haves

Experience with ARM-based SoCs and embedded computing platforms.
Experience with bootloaders such as U-Boot or Android Bootloader.
Experience with Yocto, Buildroot, Bazel, Soong, or other embedded/system build environments.
Familiarity with OTA updates, secure boot chains, TPMs, verified boot, or platform hardening.
Experience developing software for resource-constrained, body-worn, or wearable devices with power, thermal, memory, or compute limitations.
Experience in safety-critical, high-assurance, defense, aerospace, or other demanding embedded systems.
Experience with camera, display, or sensor pipelines feeding AR/XR or spatial-computing applications.
Active security clearance.

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain system-level software across Android and Linux, focusing on the kernel, BSP, AOSP, HALs, and device drivers.
Customize and integrate AOSP for custom hardware platforms, including framework, system-level, camera, and display HAL components.
Bring up new hardware and peripherals and debug issues across the hardware/software boundary with electrical and hardware engineers.
Configure, build, and maintain Linux kernels and Android system images for power- and thermally-constrained body-worn embedded devices.
Develop and maintain board support packages, device configurations, kernel modules, and low-level system components.
Debug issues involving hardware, kernels, drivers, boot processes, power management, memory, and system performance, accounting for power and thermal efficiency.
Integrate and maintain device drivers and hardware interfaces for custom peripherals, including sensor and edge-compute NPU/DSP interfaces used for on-device inference.
Own secure and reliable platform architecture, including secure boot, system integrity, permissions, and other low-level security mechanisms.
Build automated tests and debugging tools for system-level software and hardware integration, including hardware-in-the-loop validation.
Collaborate with software, electrical, mechanical, and systems engineers to identify and resolve platform issues.
Participate in code reviews, technical design discussions, and platform bring-up activities.
Produce pragmatic, reliable, and well-documented software for deployment and ruggedization across multiple hardware configurations.