Senior Embedded Linux OS Engineer (America)

Job description

About Nabu Casa Nabu Casa https://www.nabucasa.com is the organisation behind Home Assistant https://www.home-assistant.io, the world's largest free and open-source smart home platform used by over two million households. We were founded to ensure the project's sustainability, and in 2024, we partnered with the Open Home Foundation to protect and promote a wide range of open-source initiatives. Our guiding principles—privacy, choice, and sustainability—are embedded in everything we do, from our architecture to our community. We are a profitable company with no external investors. Our funding comes directly from users who subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud https://www.home-assistant.io/cloud/ and purchase Home Assistant hardware, ensuring our only stakeholders are our employees and our users. We also support other open-source projects, including those focused on hardware, standards, and voice technology. The Role As a Senior Embedded Linux OS Engineer, you are Nabu Casa's primary embedded Linux engineer within the Hardware Team, responsible for enabling, maintaining, and improving Home Assistant OS support across Nabu Casa hardware products. Home Assistant OS is an open-source project stewarded by the Open Home Foundation. Nabu Casa develops and ships hardware products that run Home Assistant OS and contributes engineering effort to ensure those devices remain reliable, performant, secure, and well-supported throughout their lifecycle. Working at the boundary between hardware and software, you help ensure Home Assistant OS runs reliably on Nabu Casa hardware platforms. You collaborate closely with the Hardware Team, Home Assistant OS contributors, and the Open Home Foundation to support existing devices, improve platform reliability, and enable new hardware platforms. You are the primary technical owner for embedded Linux enablement within the Hardware Team. This includes Buildroot-based platform development, board support packages, bootloader configuration, hardware bring-up, platform debugging, and long-term maintainability. This is a senior, hands-on engineering role requiring deep embedded Linux expertise and the ability to independently drive complex technical work from investigation through implementation with minimal supervision. This is not a Linux kernel development role. It is an embedded Linux platform engineering role focused on Buildroot-based systems, hardware enablement, operating-system integration, platform reliability, and hardware support. Core Responsibilities - Maintain and improve Home Assistant OS support for Nabu Casa hardware platforms, contributing where appropriate within the wider Home Assistant OS ecosystem. - Work closely with Home Assistant OS contributors and Open Home Foundation developers to improve platform support, resolve issues, and enable new hardware platforms. - Support board bring-up activities for new hardware products, including Buildroot configuration, board support packages (BSPs), bootloader configuration, partition layouts, and system services. - Optimise operating-system performance, hardware utilisation, stability, and reliability across supported devices. - Maintain and improve the Buildroot-based build infrastructure, ensuring builds remain reproducible, maintainable, and efficient. - Investigate and resolve platform-level issues including boot regressions, driver failures, hardware compatibility problems, update issues, kernel panics, and power-management defects. - Collaborate closely with the Hardware Team during development and validation of new boards. The Hardware Team owns hardware design and production; you ensure reliable operating-system support and compatibility. - Upstream patches as required to Linux, U-Boot, Buildroot, or other related open-source projects. - Work with silicon vendors, hardware partners, and open-source maintainers when required to improve platform support and resolve lower-level issues. - Contribute to operating-system security hardening and platform reliability improvements. - Help maintain healthy CI pipelines for operating-system builds and platform validation. - Document platform architecture, board support status, debugging procedures, known limitations, and key technical decisions. What you need to have Technical / functional: - Strong embedded Linux experience, including Buildroot, Yocto, or similar embedded operating system environments - Deep understanding of Linux operating systems, system services, hardware bring-up, and platform reliability - Experience with bootloaders, partition layouts, OTA update systems, and embedded device lifecycle management - Comfort working across hardware and software boundaries, including reading hardware schematics and datasheets - Experience with cross-compilation toolchains and low-level debugging tools such as serial consoles, GDB, strace, JTAG, oscilloscopes, or logic analysers - Ability to read and write C/C++ for lower-level or driver-related work - Strong Python skills for automation, tooling, and platform scripting - Familiarity with security hardening practices for embedded operating systems - Experience working with Home Assistant OS or similar embedded Linux platforms is a strong plus Ways of working: - Hardware-native mindset — comfortable working directly with physical devices and embedded systems - High autonomy and ownership — able to independently own complex platform areas end-to-end - Strong debugging and troubleshooting mindset — able to methodically investigate unfamiliar systems and isolate problems using evidence rather than assumptions - Comfortable learning unfamiliar systems quickly and moving across multiple technical layers including OS, hardware, drivers, automation, and platform tooling - Community-minded and collaborative — comfortable contributing in public open-source environments with asynchronous communication and code review workflows - Clear written communication skills and ability to work effectively in distributed remote teams It Would Be Great If You Also Have - Experience contributing to large open-source projects - Familiarity with Home Assistant OS and the Home Assistant ecosystem - Experience with Elixir or Nerves OS - ARM or Raspberry Pi ecosystem experience - Experience building embedded platforms for smart home or IoT products - Experience maintaining systems deployed at large scale across distributed hardware environments What we offer you Nabu Casa is a fully remote organization that uses Remote to employ people from all over the world. You will be a normal salaried employee in your country. This is a full-time position for 40 hours per week. Because we are a fully remote company, there is no fixed schedule. For the purpose of team communication, we do try to ensure at least 3 hours of overlap in the workday. You will report to our Engineering Manager. Core to the establishment of Nabu Casa was the well-being of the people building the future of the smart home. We will provide all the benefits required by the country you reside in. However, we also want to make sure all our employees, regardless of country of origin, get at least a minimal set of benefits, including: - Five weeks (twenty-five days) of paid time off. - Fourteen days of paid sick leave if your country/laws treat them as unpaid. - Six weeks of paid and six weeks of unpaid parental leave to be used in the first year after birth. - A budget for your work hardware once you start. After three years, you may keep this equipment for personal use. - An annual smart home budget to ensure you keep up-to-date with the latest smart homes offer. - An annual education budget to help you grow and stay on top of your game. - A yearly performance bonus based on company performance. - A 50% contribution to your internet connection fee at your home workspace. - One day every two weeks to work on your personal projects. - If you are currently working on Home Assistant-related side projects, you can spend work time maintaining them. When first offering a position to a new member, Nabu Casa aims to provide a total compensation package that matches the 75th percentile for the new hire's role, seniority, and local market rates. In our primary operating countries, the approximate yearly compensation will be the following: - Canada 105,000 - 129.100 CAD. - US: 120,000 - 155,000 USD - LatAm: 50,000 - 65,000 USD - Other countries: Compensation can be discussed during the first interview. These figures may be adjusted based on experience, qualifications, and work hours. About Us Nabu Casa funds the development of Home Assistant and other projects at the Open Home Foundation, Nabu Casa is best known as the organization driving the development of Home Assistant, the world's largest free and open-source smart home platform. More than two million households benefit from its home automation capabilities. Powered by a worldwide community of open-source developers, GitHub ranked it the most active open-source project in the world in 2024. We were initially founded to ensure that the development of Home Assistant would remain sustainable as it kept growing, but over time it has grown to support more open home initiatives. In 2024, the Open Home Foundation was formed to protect these open-source projects and ensure they thrive into the future. Nabu Casa is a commercial partner of the foundation, and our principles are aligned with a joint commitment to privacy, choice, and sustainability in the smart home. These are the values that we put at the heart of every decision we make. It’s woven into our architecture, licensing, community, and everything else. Nabu Casa is profitable, has no external investors, and our only funding comes from people subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud and buying Home Assistant hardware. That means the only stakeholders we have to concern ourselves with are our employees and our users. Other Open Home Foundation projects and collaborations supported by Nabu Casa include: - Open hardware tools (e.g.,ESPHome, ESP Web Tools) - Open standards (e.g., Python Matter Server, Z-Wave JS, ZigPy, BTHome, Improv Wi-Fi) - Open voice (e.g., Rhasspy, Wyoming Protocol, Piper) - Music Assistant The recruitment process - Apply for the role - Our team will review your application with the hiring manager - Screening - Technical assessment - Interview with our Engineering Team - Offer - Join our team!