Senior Rust Systems Engineer — Edge Autonomy & Secure Deployments

JobCubby; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 149,000 - 201,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401k retirement plan

Stock options

Home office budget

Flexible time off

Parental leave

Training reimbursements

Job summary

Defense Unicorns seeks a mission-driven Rust Software Engineer to build resilient systems for military operators at the tactical edge, focusing on autonomous capabilities and human-in-the-loop workflows.

You will design high-performance Rust code for constrained environments, integrate with hardware, and contribute across architecture, testing, and field deployment, ensuring traceable, secure updates and reliable operation.

Qualifications

• Proven professional experience in software engineering, embedded systems, or firmware delivering production-grade products.
• Strong proficiency in Rust; experience in low-level or embedded/no_std environments preferred.
• Experience integrating with microcontroller peripherals (SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet, USB).
• Familiarity with software design, algorithms, debugging, testing, and performance optimization.
• U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI clearance.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement high-performance, distributed Rust software for cloud-native and edge environments.
• Participate in system architecture and hardware-part evaluation for existing and new systems.
• Develop software/models for human-in-the-loop autonomy workflows for distributed operations.
• Build infrastructure for deterministic builds, reproducible environments, and configuration management.
• Implement and maintain OTA update mechanisms for fielded systems (VMs, containers, embedded packages).
• Integrate software with MCU peripherals and hardware buses (SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet, USB).
• Develop and execute test strategies including Unit, SITL, HITL, and end-to-end testing.
• Collaborate with mission heroes and multidisciplinary teams for deployments and exercises.
• Optimize systems for performance, reliability, power, and maintainability.

Skills

Rust programming

Embedded systems

Distributed systems

Networking

Debugging/Profiling

Communication

Security clearance

Job description

Defense Unicorns seeks a mission-driven Rust Software Engineer to build resilient systems for military operators at the tactical edge, focusing on autonomous capabilities and human-in-the-loop workflows.

You will design high-performance Rust code for constrained environments, integrate with hardware, and contribute across architecture, testing, and field deployment, ensuring traceable, secure updates and reliable operation.