Senior Embedded OS Engineer, Yocto & CI for Drones

Meritas Advisory Group, LLC; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Meritas Advisory Group, LLC is seeking a hands-on Embedded OS Engineer to own the Ubuntu-based Linux firmware stack on our MK2 drone platform (Qualcomm QRB5165). You will build the OS, keep it secure, and ship it through automated CI/CD pipelines.

This role requires deep work on low-level OS internals, Yocto BitBake, systemd, and headless hardware with no display. You will develop maintainable image recipes and patches to the BSP.

Qualifications

• Hands-on embedded OS engineer with low-level OS internals experience.
• Experience with Ubuntu-based firmware and secure OS builds.
• Familiar with Yocto/BitBake workflows and image recipes.
• Ability to optimize build performance and manage sstate cache across CI.
• Knowledge of patching BSPs and patch-based workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain the Yocto/BitBake build system and image recipes.
• Write and maintain patches against upstream BSPs; avoid modifying upstream sources.
• Debug BitBake task failures across do_fetch → do_image pipeline.
• Tune build performance: threads, PARALLEL_MAKE, sstate cache for Jenkins.
• Manage package inclusion/exclusion and inter-recipe dependencies.
• Implement ROOTFS_POSTPROCESS_COMMAND for post-build OS hardening.
• Maintain and improve Jenkins pipelines for firmware images.

Skills

Embedded Linux

CI/CD automation

Headless hardware

Build system tuning

Tools

Yocto/BitBake

QEMU

Jenkins

Git/Gerrit

Systemd

Job description

Meritas Advisory Group, LLC is seeking a hands-on Embedded OS Engineer to own the Ubuntu-based Linux firmware stack on our MK2 drone platform (Qualcomm QRB5165). You will build the OS, keep it secure, and ship it through automated CI/CD pipelines.

This role requires deep work on low-level OS internals, Yocto BitBake, systemd, and headless hardware with no display. You will develop maintainable image recipes and patches to the BSP.