LA
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States; Palo Alto, California, United States; Detroit, Michigan, United States Today $179k – $269k
Linux Embedded & Firmware Engineering Jobs
Embedded and firmware engineers write software that runs directly on hardware: microcontrollers, SoCs, and resource-constrained devices. This career track covers RTOS development, device driver authoring, board support packages (BSPs), and embedded Linux distributions built with Yocto or Buildroot. Demand is strong in automotive, industrial, consumer electronics, medical devices, and IoT.
EI
Pune, Maharashtra, India Today Not disclosed
XS
Burlingame, California, United States Today Not disclosed
Hawthorne, California, United States Today $125k – $175k
Costa Mesa, California, United States Today $146k – $194k
Auckland, New Zealand Today Not disclosed
Glen Cove, New York, United States Yesterday $170k – $210k
Long Beach, California, United States Yesterday $181k – $249k
Long Beach, California, United States Yesterday $154k – $211k
LA
Detroit, Michigan, United States Yesterday Not disclosed
RM
Wilmington, Massachusetts, United States Yesterday Not disclosed
San Francisco, California, United States Yesterday Not disclosed
LA
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States; Palo Alto, California, United States; Detroit, Michigan, United States Yesterday $150k – $225k
BC
Palo Alto, California, United States Yesterday Not disclosed
Pangyo, South Korea Yesterday Not disclosed
Hawthorne, California, United States Yesterday $165k – $230k
El Segundo, California, United States Yesterday $184k – $186k
Austin, Texas, United States 2d ago Not disclosed
Raleigh, North Carolina, United States 4d ago Not disclosed
SA
San Mateo, California, United States 5d ago $100k – $300k
Frequently Asked Questions
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Embedded Linux engineers customise the Linux kernel and userspace for specific hardware targets, write and maintain device drivers, build custom Linux distributions using Yocto or Buildroot, integrate peripheral hardware, and optimise for low power and real-time constraints. They work closely with hardware engineers during board bring-up.
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C programming is the core language. Engineers need to understand memory-mapped I/O, interrupt handling, DMA, bus protocols (SPI, I2C, CAN, UART), cross-compilation toolchains, and hardware debugging with JTAG/SWD. For embedded Linux specifically: Yocto/OpenEmbedded, U-Boot, kernel configuration, and device tree authoring are key skills.
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RTOS (Real-Time Operating Systems like FreeRTOS, Zephyr, VxWorks) are designed for hard real-time determinism on microcontrollers with kilobytes of RAM. Embedded Linux runs on more powerful SoCs (hundreds of MB RAM) and provides a rich POSIX environment with full networking, filesystems, and package management, but is not natively hard-real-time (though PREEMPT_RT patch helps).
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Embedded engineers with strong Linux and C skills earn $100,000–$160,000 in the US. Automotive and aerospace domains often pay a premium for safety-critical experience (AUTOSAR, DO-178C). Firmware engineers at semiconductor companies and Apple typically earn at the higher end of the range.