Staff / Principal Engineer – Vehicle Compute & Networking

Staff / Principal Engineer – Vehicle Compute & Networking
Mountain View, CA (onsite)
18+Month Contract

About the Role
Our client is looking for a Staff / Principal Engineer to architect and lead the design of the vehicle compute and networking stack—the modular, scalable interface between autonomy software and the underlying hardware platforms. You will own the technical roadmap for hardware health monitoring and fleet-wide performance optimization, establish engineering standards that keep the platform fast and dependable, and provide deep technical oversight across software, hardware, and systems teams.
This is a hands-on technical leadership position. You will remain involved in the code and on the bench for the hardest system-level problems—from Linux kernel tuning to multi-layer networking—while mentoring senior engineers and driving architectural decisions that scale across the fleet.

What You'll Do

• Architect and lead the design of the vehicle computing and networking stack, ensuring a modular, scalable interface between autonomy software and hardware platforms.
• Drive the technical roadmap for hardware health monitoring and fleet-wide performance optimization.
• Lead cross-functional integration of new sensors and embedded devices and define standards for low-latency data interfaces.
• Establish engineering standards for Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing and automated performance profiling.
• Provide technical oversight on complex system-level issues spanning Linux kernel tuning, high-performance C++, and multi-layer networking across OSI Layers 1–4.
• Define the architecture for on-target diagnostics and self-test, including CPU, communication and memory load generation, power-on self-tests, controlled shutdown/sleep sequences, voltage-fault detection with safe-county entry, and memory/logic BIST.
• Set standards for how diagnostics and self-tests are triggered, monitored, and reported across ECUs.
• Establish standards for communication-bus health and error monitoring across CAN and Ethernet, including link integrity, cable-fault and signal-integrity detection, with fleet-level logging and reporting.
• Mentor senior engineers and raise the technical bar for architecture, design, code quality, performance, and system reliability across teams.

What You'll Bring

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including ownership of large-scale architecture at the hardware/software interface.
• Expert-level C++ experience building high-performance, thread-safe, memory-efficient Linux systems.
• 5+ years of system-level development experience involving Linux networking stacks, performance profiling, and hardware bring-up.
• Deep knowledge of networking protocols across the stack, including CAN, UDP, TCP, and higher-level protocols such as gRPC, RTP, and HTTP.
• Demonstrated cross-functional technical leadership across software, hardware, and systems teams, with a track record of shipping complex platforms.
• Strong systems-debugging instincts and the ability to reason across the boundary from application code through the kernel, drivers, networking stack, and hardware behavior.

Nice to Have

• Experience with autonomy sensors such as lidar, radar, and cameras and their integration into low-latency data pipelines.
• Experience with Time-Sensitive Networking protocols such as PTP/gPTP and Ethernet switching.
• Experience with functional safety frameworks such as ISO 26262.
• Experience optimizing heterogeneous compute workloads across CPU, GPU, and accelerators.
• Networking certifications.
• Experience building distributed fleet health-monitoring frameworks.

Why Join Us
You'll set the technical direction for the compute and networking backbone of autonomous vehicle platforms—work that spans silicon to fleet, and code to architecture. This is an opportunity for an engineer who wants both the ownership of a principal-level technical mandate and the satisfaction of solving the deepest system-level problems on real hardware.

Core Technical Focus
C++ • Linux Systems • Linux Kernel • Vehicle Compute • Embedded Systems • CAN • Ethernet • TCP/UDP • Hardware Bring-Up • HIL Testing • Diagnostics • Health Monitoring • Performance Optimization • System Architecture

Metasys Technologies/NVISH is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identify, national origin, veteran or disability status.