Software Engineer, Networking & Linux Systems
Avride
- Location
- Austin, Texas
- Work model
- On-Site
- Level
- Mid
- Posted
- 10h ago
Skills
About this role
About the team
We build the foundational system software and embedded Linux platform that run our autonomous vehicles and delivery robots. Modern autonomous platforms are essentially rolling, edge data centers: high-throughput cameras, LiDARs, compute nodes, and managed switches must communicate with ultra-low latency and microsecond-level time synchronization. Simultaneously, the vehicle must maintain robust, high-availability connectivity to the cloud via cellular and Wi-Fi networks while moving through unpredictable physical environments. Our team owns this foundation end-to-end: the on-board network architecture, customized Linux images, fleet-wide OS updates, and the connectivity daemons that keep our fleet online. When our layer works seamlessly, the autonomy stack above it doesn't have to think about hardware, packets, or clocks — and that is exactly the goal.
About the role
We are looking for a Senior Systems & Networking Engineer to own, scale, and harden the communication fabric of our autonomous vehicles. You will focus deeply on both our complex, multi-gigabit internal network (connecting safety-critical sensors and high-compute nodes using the latest Automotive Ethernet and TSN standards) and external connectivity (high-throughput 5G telemetry), debugging complex issues across the Linux stack and target hardware. This is a high-impact, hands-on role with broad technical ownership. You will collaborate closely with core platform and hardware engineers to evolve our networking architecture. Your work spans the entire systems stack — from low-level optimizations like NIC ring buffer tuning and microsecond PTP/gPTP synchronization, to architecting high-performance Go daemons for multi-carrier cellular bonding and failover.
What you'll do
Internal Networking & Time Synchronization
• Safety-Critical Infrastructure: Architect, configure, and optimize the internal fault-tolerant network linking on-board compute nodes, controllers, and high-bandwidth sensors (LiDARs, cameras).
• Clock Synchronization: Drive the design and reliability of vehicle-wide time synchronization utilizing PTP / IEEE 802.1AS (gPTP) for safety-critical data paths.
• Switch & Hardware Management: Configure and troubleshoot managed automotive/industrial switches (e.g., Marvell, Broadcom), VLAN segmentation, and Automotive Ethernet to ensure deterministic traffic isolation.
External Connectivity & Platform Systems
• Engineered Connectivity: Design robust failover mechanisms, network bonding frameworks (aggregating multiple LTE/5G carriers) to ensure zero-drop external links
• Linux Performance Tuning: Debug and tune low-level networking parameters (NIC buffers, hardware offloads, interrupt handling, and NAPI behavior) for high-throughput, low-latency performance.
• Systems Software Development: Write and maintain reliable system-level software, telemetry agents, and daemons in Go and Python for x86_64 and ARM64 (NVIDIA) platforms.
• Hardware-Software Integration: Assist the embedded Linux team with hardware bring-up, debugging physical interfaces (PCIe, Ethernet), and integrating networking components into our custom OS deployment.
• Observability: Build end-to-end monitoring for the networking stack, exporting granular performance metrics so the fleet's