Senior Embedded Software Engineer — Player APIs & Performance

Sonos LLC; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 143,000 - 238,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

401(k) with company match

Open Time Off policy

Paid holidays

Employee discount & Sonos Radio

Job summary

Sonos is seeking a Principal Embedded Software Engineer for the Player API & Control team in a hybrid role based in Boston or Seattle. You will drive performance, reliability, and architectural improvements across the player stack, collaborating with App, Cloud, Security, Data, and QA teams.

The role emphasizes deep technical execution and measurable customer impact. You will mentor engineers, participate in design reviews, and help shape product definition with a customer-first mindset, while

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years in embedded or systems-level software engineering.
• Strong proficiency in C++.
• Experience with REST and/or WebSocket APIs.
• Experience debugging multi-threaded systems.
• Experience with telemetry, instrumentation, or performance frameworks.
• Deep understanding of TLS/mTLS, WebSocket, HTTP, LAN networking.
• This role requires commuting distance to Seattle or Boston.

Responsibilities

• Lead performance and reliability initiatives across Sonos APIs.
• Work on Player Control components and develop software for new products.
• Mentor local junior peers and facilitate internal development and testing.
• Participate in planning, requirements, development, and testing lifecycles.
• Advocate for customers in product definition and planning processes.
• Support security, scalability, cost, and overall performance initiatives.
• Identify and reduce latency in player-to-app and player-to-cloud.
• Design architectural improvements (e.g., async execution, protocol optimizations).
• Use telemetry to correlate code changes with real-world impact.
• Collaborate with App, UX, PM, Data teams to improve UX.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews and RCA investigations.
• Proactively investigate system-level issues before customer impact.
• Present findings and proposals to leadership.

Skills

Embedded software

Performance optimization

Cross-team collaboration

Customer advocacy

Education

Bachelor's Degree in CS or equivalent

Tools

C++

REST APIs

WebSocket APIs

Telemetry/Performance tooling

Job description

Sonos is seeking a Principal Embedded Software Engineer for the Player API & Control team in a hybrid role based in Boston or Seattle. You will drive performance, reliability, and architectural improvements across the player stack, collaborating with App, Cloud, Security, Data, and QA teams.

The role emphasizes deep technical execution and measurable customer impact. You will mentor engineers, participate in design reviews, and help shape product definition with a customer-first mindset, while