Founding Engineer (Edge Systems)

a16z speedrun

$150K — $180K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience in software development, specifically with C, C++, or Rust.
  • Strong understanding of Linux systems fundamentals.
  • Experience shipping software for embedded or hardware-constrained environments.
  • Ability to debug issues across userspace and kernel interactions.
  • Sound knowledge of concurrency, scheduling, and process isolation principles.
  • Instinctive grasp of reliability and operational correctness in software.

Responsibilities

  • Architect and develop an edge runtime for various computing platforms.
  • Capture and synchronize multimodal data with minimal overhead.
  • Integrate the platform with existing robotics software and hardware tools.
  • Design and implement local execution for models and anomaly detection.
  • Plan for system resilience through crash recovery and safe degradation.
  • Optimize resource consumption across CPU, GPU, and memory.
  • Define the interface between embedded runtime and broader control systems.

Benefits

  • Flexible working environment with potential for remote work.
  • Opportunity to work on cutting-edge robotics technologies.
  • Access to continuous learning and professional development resources.
  • Contributions towards impactful, real-world applications in automation.
Full Job Description
The Role:

Build the software that lives next to-or directly inside-the robot.

Munari's edge runtime must capture and synchronize high-rate multimodal data, run local models and detection logic, manage policy execution, survive intermittent networks, diagnose failures, and operate within tight CPU, memory, latency, power, and storage budgets.

This is a systems role for someone who is comfortable moving between kernel behavior, hardware interfaces, real-time constraints, networking, and distributed systems.

You are probably the person who reaches for perf, strace, bpftrace, ftrace, a packet capture, or a logic analyzer before guessing.

What you will work on:
  • Architect and build a portable edge runtime for ARM, x86, NVIDIA Jetson, and industrial compute platforms.
  • Capture, synchronize, buffer, and selectively transmit video, sensor, actuator, telemetry, and policy data with minimal overhead.
  • Integrate Munari with Linux, ROS 2, DDS, cameras, sensors, motor controllers, field buses, and existing robot software.
  • Build local execution for models, policies, anomaly detection, event triggers, and automated failure capture.
  • Design device identity, configuration, secure updates, rollback, remote diagnostics, and fleet-wide runtime management.
  • Build for failure: watchdogs, crash recovery, safe degradation, offline operation, fault injection, and post-incident diagnosability.
  • Profile and optimize CPU, GPU, memory, I/O, networking, startup time, and power consumption.
  • Establish the boundary between our embedded runtime, customer software, robot hardware, and the Munari control plane.
You may be a strong fit if:
  • You are deeply comfortable in C, C++, or Rust and have strong Linux systems fundamentals.
  • You understand concurrency, scheduling, memory, networking, IPC, filesystems, and process isolation.
  • You have shipped software on embedded, robotic, automotive, industrial, aerospace, or other hardware-constrained systems.
  • You can debug a problem that crosses userspace, the kernel, a driver, a device, and the physical world.
  • You have practical instincts about reliability, graceful degradation, and the difference between theoretical and operational correctness.
  • You enjoy making complex software disappear into a small, dependable runtime.

Experience with eBPF, PREEMPT_RT, systemd, Yocto or Buildroot, ROS 2, CAN, EtherCAT, GStreamer, V4L2, CUDA, TensorRT, or hardware-in-the-loop testing is valuable, but no single technology is required.

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at a16z speedrun

More Consumer Technology Jobs

Find similar Founding Engineer (Edge Systems) jobs: