About the role
About 1X We’re building humanoid robots that work in home - doing the chores, handling the tasks, and giving people their time back. Simple, but it’s not. To do this right, we have to solve robotics, AI, manufacturing - at the same time, at scale, in a form factor that has to be safe enough to live with your family. If you’re inspired by this, you’ll thrive here. We’ve been at this since 2014 and we’re at the point where the hard problems are behind us and the hard work is in front of us. NEO is our flagship - a home robot designed to move, learn, and operate in the real world alongside real people. We’re not demoing it - we’re shipping it. We’re excited to meet you, if this excites you. If you’ve spent your career working on problems that matter and want to see them actually reach the world - this is that moment. We’re scaling, we’re hiring with intention, and we need people who want to build something that will genuinely change how humans spend their time - safely creating abundance for all.
About
the Team The Foundations team owns the platform that NEO runs on from the moment silicon powers up to the software stack that perception, planning, and controls depend on. We build and ship the embedded Linux distribution, BSP, kernel, drivers, and system software end-to-end: this is the layer between hardware and intelligence, and its stability, boot speed, and update reliability directly determines what every other team can ship. If you want to own the OS as a product, not an afterthought, this is that team. Your Charter Own the embedded Linux foundation for NEO from BSP and kernel through distribution, provisioning, and OTA updates, ensuring it boots fast, stays stable, debugs cleanly, and updates confidently as we scale from prototypes to a growing fleet in homes and warehouses. This is critical-path work: every other team’s ability to develop, test, and ship depends on a platform that is reproducible, observable, and production-grade. The operating system is a product, and you are its owner. Key Outcomes Ship a production-grade custom embedded Linux distribution (Yocto) with reproducible builds, fast deterministic startup, and release artifacts that the full engineering team can depend on across hardware revisions Own kernel and driver development end-to-end device tree, board bring-up, peripheral enablement such that new hardware platforms are enabled on schedule with minimal downstream disruption Deliver reliable fleet tooling for provisioning, flashing, and OTA updates that scales from dozens of prototypes to high-volume production without manual intervention or data loss Build CI/CD for embedded images and kernel builds that catches regressions before they reach hardware, reducing bring-up cycles and unblocking dependent teams faster Key Competencies Platform ownership mindset treating the OS as a product with real users, not a build artifact; holds strong opinions about release engineering, reproducibility, and what “production-grade” means for embedded Linux Kernel-level fluency debugging confidently at the kernel level, traces software root causes from hardware symptoms, and writes production device drivers for common buses (I2C, SPI, CAN, USB, Ethernet, PCIe) Schematic literacy reading hardware schematics to reason about behavior from software symptoms, reducing the round-trip between firmware investigation and hardware root cause High-ownership operator defining the standard rather than inheriting it; takes end-to-end responsibility from prototype bring-up through fleet-scale production hardening Minimum
