Firmware Engineer, Data Center

Meter; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Meter is hiring to design and ship a high-performance switch OS and firmware, competing with SONiC-scale platforms. You will collaborate with engineering leadership across hardware, software, QA, and infrastructure to deliver reliable solutions for TOR and spine switches.

Expect to work with beta customers, stay at the forefront of data center networking, and influence Meter’s end-to-end product stack with a strong emphasis on simplicity and performance.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, L2/L3 networking).
• Proficiency in C/C++ (with Golang or similar backend languages a plus).
• Excited to play an early and broadly influential role in Meter’s Data Center products.

Responsibilities

• Scoping, writing, and testing features relevant for Meter's switch OS and firmware.
• Work closely with senior engineers on hardware, firmware, QA, and infrastructure teams.
• Collaborate with beta customers to test features and gather product feedback.
• Stay current on technical research in data center hardware/networking and share knowledge across teams.

Skills

Networking fundamentals

C/C++

Golang

Job description

The internet runs the world. Organizations across the world—from offices and schools to data centers and manufacturing facilities—spend billions annually on computer networking to stay productive.

However, these networks are messy and brittle. Traditional networking companies only build one piece of the puzzle—either hardware, software, or operations—but never all three, leading to inefficient silos and slow changes. Network engineers, who are the lifeblood of the industry,are often left scrambling to fix issues, hand editing configs, guess-and-checking solutions, and worrying how the ever-increasing complexity of the system they manage will break.

Meter has spent the last decade vertically integrating the fragmented computer networking industry across hardware (power, routing, switches, security, wireless), firmware, operating systems, and real-world operations. By owning the full stack, we make it exceptionally easy for any business to have great networking, internet, and Wi‑Fi. We believe people who build hardware and software should be the ones responsible for it. Our ambition is to evolve internet infrastructure into a utility, and we raised a $170M Series C to advance our work.

Why data centers?

We’ve extended Meter’s hardware, firmware, and infrastructure platforms to include Ethernet top-of-rack and spine switching.

Paired with Meter’s end-to-end delivery model, customers get one accountable operator instead of a stitched-together stack of vendors — the team that designs the hardware also writes the OS, builds the monitoring software, and runs the deployment. Pricing is tied to power consumption, which is how businesses actually buy data center capacity today. Learn more about our approach to automation at meter.ai.

What success looks like

You will build and design a performant switch OS and firmware similar to SONiC. You will work cross-functionally, working closely with Meter’s engineering leadership, hardware, QA, and infrastructure teams, who have previously built some of the most widely deployed products in networking.

Within six months, you’ll have shipped firmware critical to the adoption of our TOR and Spine switches. By the end of your first year, your success will be measured by the following:

• Code quality : Our customers rely on us to deliver reliable, performant infrastructure for their workloads. Prioritizing simplicity, maintainability, and readability, in addition to ensuring code is performant and well-tested, is highly valued.

• Code velocity : Quality and speed aren’t always at odds. Obsession with delivering a quality product can make moving quickly exciting. Moving quickly manifests itself in multiple ways — sunsetting bad ideas, trying new ones, collecting feedback, and building the most practical solution given a customer need.

What your day-to-day will look like

• Scoping, writing, and testing features relevant for our switch OS.

• Work closely with senior engineers on hardware, firmware, QA, and infrastructure teams.

• Work with select beta customers to test features and seek product feedback.

• Stay current on technical research in data center hardware/networking and distribute this knowledge across Meter’s engineering teams.

Who you are

• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, L2/L3 networking).

• Proficiency in C/C++ (with Golang or similar backend languages a plus).

• Excited to play an early and broadly influential role in the development of Meter’s Data Center products.

• A mindset of curiosity and impact motivated by turning complex systems into simple, elegant customer experiences.

• A track record of identifying issues before they arise and bringing clear solutions to your dependent engineering teams.

• You’re known to be dependable, kind, and autonomous.

Compensation

• The estimated pay range for this role is $210,000 - $300,000.

• Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Meter’s equity plan.