Senior/Principal Rust Engineer

lowRISC CIC; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading semiconductor company in Cambridge is seeking a skilled Software Engineer proficient in Rust programming. The role involves developing embedded systems and cloud infrastructure that supports testing products at scale. Ideal candidates will possess strong communication skills and a solid foundation in Linux and compilers. This position offers generous benefits, including a 33-day holiday allowance and a competitive pension plan.

Benefits

Generous employer pension contribution

33 days holiday allowance

Private medical insurance

Life insurance

Paid sabbatical after 4 years

Qualifications

• Highly proficient in Rust programming with a deep understanding of ownership model and concurrency.
• Solid knowledge of the Rust ecosystem, tools, and libraries.
• A high standard of written and spoken English.

Responsibilities

• Work on RISC-V firmware and driver development.
• Develop cloud-based infrastructure that tests products at scale.
• Contribute to open source projects.

Skills

Rust programming

C programming

Understanding of compiler internals

Linux knowledge

Experience contributing to open source projects

Education

Higher degree in relevant field

Tools

LLVM

Bazel

Job description

Overview

At lowRISC we believe that open source development can transform the semiconductor industry. To help achieve this vision of production-ready, commercial-grade chips and silicon building blocks, we employ a software team with a wide range of skills.

Work Areas

Our software engineers work across the full software stack, from firmware and toolchains that interact directly with hardware to cloud-based infrastructure that tests our products at scale. This includes work in areas such as:

• RISC-V firmware and driver development.
• Software hardening and security tools.
• Embedded operating systems (in Rust and C).
• Compilers, code generators, and linters.
• Simulators and emulators (e.g. QEMU).
• Electronic design automation (EDA) tools.
• Performance and code size analysis.
• Cloud-based infrastructure (such as continuous integration pipelines).

Requirements

• Highly proficient in Rust programming; deep understanding of fundamental concepts such as the ownership model, lifetimes, concurrency, parallelism, memory management and procedural macros.
• Solid knowledge of the Rust ecosystem, including tools and libraries.
• A high standard of written and spoken English.

Preferred or highly valued

• Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining large-scale or modular Rust codebases.
• Expert understanding of unsafe Rust, FFI, and low-level systems programming.
• Strong proficiency in C; familiarity with C++ and Python are a plus.
• Solid understanding of compiler internals; experience with LLVM is a plus.
• Experience with build systems and reproducible tooling (e.g. Bazel, Nix, uv).
• Experience developing for embedded or resource-constrained environments, including real-time systems.
• Familiarity with CI/CD for embedded or systems software.
• Strong knowledge of computer architecture; some experience with assembly languages (x86, RISC-V); familiarity with hardware design is a plus.
• Good knowledge of Linux.
• Experience contributing to open source projects.
• Higher degree levels and academic research experience are highly valued.

Benefits

Benefits include a generous employer pension contribution (up to 12.5% subject to an employee contribution via salary sacrifice of 6%), holiday allowance (33 days, pro rata, including public holidays), private medical insurance, group income protection, life insurance and a 4 week paid sabbatical after 4 years of service.

Location

The team is based in Cambridge, UK, amongst the Silicon Fen’s ecosystem of high tech start ups. Our office is in the heart of the city and a short walk from the train station.

Equal Employment Opportunity

We do not discriminate against any employee or candidate because of race, colour, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other protected characteristic. Please let us know if you need any adjustments made to the application or selection process. We will be happy to help.