Software Engineer - Embedded Systems (Cleared)

swoop; Fort Snelling Unorganized Territory (MN); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Swoop Technologies is seeking a talented embedded software engineer to help build a distributed operating system and run-time for complex hardware environments. The role focuses on firmware, drivers, and OS services, requiring strong C and Rust skills and low-level hardware insight.

The position is hybrid, based out of Minneapolis/St. Paul or Washington, DC, with 3+ days in office. Active TS clearance is required and a bachelor’s in a technical field is expected.

Qualifications

• Active TS Clearance is required.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 4+ years in OS/kernel, RTOS, embedded design, microkernel, or bare metal development.
• Experience programming in C and Rust, with understanding of low-level hardware.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain embedded system firmware including drivers, bootloaders, and OS-critical functions.
• Contribute to OS integration and kernel modules for hardware abstraction layers.
• Design and implement application-layer features leveraging firmware interfaces for performance and robustness.
• Collaborate with other teams to debug issues across firmware, OS, and application boundaries.
• Work with deployment engineering to address diverse customer requirements.

Skills

C programming

Rust programming

Low-level hardware understanding

Team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/EE

Tools

Embedded toolchains

Debugging tools

Job description

About Swoop:

Swoop Technologies has a mission to organize and make accessible the world's military and critical infrastructure. We are building a distributed operating system, SwoopOS, that decomposes the world's equipment into a distributed combined robotic embodiment upon which a new generation of distributed systems, autonomous systems, and agentic AI can be built and deployed using our SDK, Valhalla, and operated via our browser, Surf. Imagine the world's equipment - consisting of the electrical grid, communications architectures, manufacturing facilities, and militaries as a trapped supply of inputs possessing the potential to ensure Western military advantage, sovereign control of economically competitive manufacturing capacity, or the creation of a grid that fosters energy dominance. Swoop is liberating these trapped assets, allowing them to contribute to the world's future as a series of building blocks to be combined at the speed of software, limited by only the hard constraints of physics and the soft constraints of safety. That is what Swoop is building. Not in the data center or cloud or edge on-premise computing node. In the physical world. This is a hybrid position that requires someone based in Minneapolis/St. Paul OR Washington, DC who can work in-office 3+ days per week

Impact:

Joining our Edge Team means you will get to work on building an operating system. Not an abstraction, virtualization, or data layer. A legitimate distributed operating system. This OS has to work across heterogeneous instruction sets, support a new generation of distributed system abstractions, treat security as a first principle, and work at the scale of power grids and entire militaries. You will influence the intersection of artificial intelligence, robotics, and the physical world - building a compute model the OS schedules and executes across the most geopolitically relevant problem sets. It is a bad-ass problem where every member of the team contributes tangibly on a daily basis. Come join us in either our Minneapolis or Washington, DC offices.

What You'll Do:

• Develop and maintain embedded system firmware including low-level drivers, bootloaders, and other OS-critical functions to enable reliable OS initialization and hardware interaction.
• Contribute to OS integration and kernel-level modules, ensuring efficient communication between hardware abstraction layers and higher-level system software.
• Design and implement application-layer features and system services that leverage firmware interfaces, optimizing for performance, resource use, and robustness.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with other engineering teams to debug complex issues spanning firmware, operating system, and application boundaries.
• Collaborate closely with the deployment engineering team, solving technical challenges for various customer requirements

You Should Have:

• Active TS Clearance
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or related technical field, or equivalent technical experience
• 4+ years of experience in one or more of the following: Operating System/Kernel development, RTOS, Embedded Systems/Firmware design, Microkernel development, Bare Metal development
• Software development experience in C and Rust
• Understanding of low level hardware systems
• Travel Requirement - 5-20%

Bonus if you have:

• Knowledge of one or more of the following: Microcontrollers, SoC, device drivers, hardware bringup, power management, ARM processors, performance optimization, file systems, bootloading, firmware, x86 assembly, system BIOS, FPGAs or hardware/software integration
• Understanding of clocks and timing as it pertains to processor instructions
• Familiarity with serial protocols such as I2C, SPI, UART, USB
• Demonstrated knowledge of systems engineering and distributed systems

Swoop Technologies is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other factor protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.