SeniorPrincipal Rust Engineer

lowRISC CIC; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading semiconductor technology company in Cambridge is seeking skilled software engineers to work on open source development for producing commercial-grade chips. The role focuses on Rust programming with a strong emphasis on embedded systems, and applicants should have a high standard of English communication skills. Benefits include competitive salary, generous pension contributions, and extensive holiday allowance as well as additional perks like private medical insurance and a sabbatical.

Benefits

Generous employer pension contribution

33 days holiday allowance

Private medical insurance

Life insurance

4-week paid sabbatical after 4 years

Qualifications

• Highly proficient in Rust programming; strong knowledge of the ownership model and memory management.
• Knowledge of the Rust ecosystem, including tools and libraries required.
• Excellent written and spoken English is necessary.

Skills

Rust programming

C programming

English proficiency

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.

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).

lowRISC is a non‑profit Community Interest Company. With a business model that includes member fees and engineering services we have shown that it is possible to run world‑leading projects collaboratively for everyone’s benefit. Originally a spin‑out from Cambridge University’s Computer Lab our UK team is based in Cambridge and our Switzerland team is based in Zurich.

Our Ibex CPU and OpenTitan Root of Trust projects have been taken to production silicon partnering with world‑leading organisations including Google, combining open‑source approaches with best‑practice chip design methodologies.

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

• Salary dependent upon experience.

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.

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

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.