Software Engineering Lead, Firmware/OS

About Rivet  

Rivet is an American company building integrated task systems — fusing hardened hardware with software, sensors, AI, and networking — for industrial workforces and defense personnel. We create capabilities that multiply the effectiveness of every individual and withstand the world’s toughest environments. 

We serve the people who build, operate, maintain, and defend our way of life. From technicians and engineers to first responders and service members, they embody the hard work, ingenuity, and meritocratic values that drive Western prosperity. Yet too often they are forced to rely on outdated tools that fail under modern pressures. Rivet exists to reset that priority. 

At Rivet, you’ll join a mission-driven team that fuses disciplines to deliver decisive outcomes where they matter most. Whether shaping our technology, strengthening our partnerships, or building our culture, every role here contributes to equipping the front lines with the modern systems they deserve. 

Work Authorization Requirement: Due to the nature of our business and compliance with federal regulations, all candidates must be a "U.S. Person". Upon hire, you will be required to provide documentation verifying your status as a U.S. Citizen, a lawful permanent resident, or a protected individual under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).

Role: Software Engineering Lead, Firmware/OS

Location: San Jose

Compensation*: $250,000-$300,000 + benefits

Description

As a Software Engineering Lead, Firmware/OS, you'll work with a team of committed engineers to build the foundation of our device platform - from the OS layer to secure containers and lightweight services. You will own the core pieces of Android and Linux systems that scale across resource-constrained, multi-node environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain system-level platform code across Android and Linux, including AOSP customizations, system services, init processes, and kernel modules.
• Architect scalable, extensible, secure, and robust systems. Lead a team to execute on those designs as requirements evolve.
• Develop and maintain Linux-based services for inter-device communications, message queuing, and observability pipelines.
• Interface with hardware teams to maintain drivers and integrate custom hardware and peripherals.
• Build and manage immutable system images, secure and reproducible environments, including certificate signing, sandboxing, and runtime hardening.
• Define, implement, and enforce system policy, network configurations, authentication, and enterprise integrations for Android and Linux-based devices.
• Align coding and deployment practices with regulatory and high-assurance frameworks.
• Collaborate across engineering disciplines (software, electrical, mechanical) to inform constraints and requirements.
• Ship pragmatic, secure, and well-documented systems that scale.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building and maintaining Android and/or Linux system-level code and framework extensions (AOSP, custom ROMs, HALs, device drivers, kernel configuration) in an enterprise environment.
• Strong software architecture fundamentals with the ability to design systems that are secure, scalable, extensible, and robust.
• Experience with networking fundamentals and low-latency communication protocols, both IPC and RPC (e.g., gRPC, protobuf, AIDL, libzmq).
• Experience integrating custom hardware and peripherals into Android and Linux environments.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for system image generation, AOSP builds, and firmware packaging.
• Familiarity with automated testing strategies for embedded and system-level software, including hardware-in-the-loop and integration testing.
• Experience with OTA update infrastructure, including image delivery, staged rollouts, and rollback mechanisms.
• Familiarity with secure boot, TPM, certificate chains, system integrity verification, and other low-level security primitives.
• A security-first mindset with practical experience hardening real-world systems.
• Experience working on devices and systems with resource constraints (thermal, power, compute).
• Effective communication and collaboration across engineering disciplines.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with defense-related security frameworks and protocols (ITAR, security classifications, STIG, encryption).
• Distributed systems experience, including service discovery, health monitoring, fault tolerance, and graceful degradation across multi-node systems.

*Total compensation may vary within this range and is determined by years and level of relevant experience, job-related skills, education, and other factors. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for equity grants and other forms of compensation. Eligible employees also receive a competitive benefits package, including unlimited PTO.

EOE