Principal Software Engineer – Core OS, Vehicle Compute (Automotive)

Location: Hybrid, with onsite reporting at least 3 times per week in Lynnwood, Washington or Mountain View, California

Salary: $216,400–$450,400 per year

Company

hirify.global develops vehicles, intelligent software, battery systems, safety technologies, and connected mobility experiences.

What you will do

• Define the architecture and long-term roadmap for the Core OS layer, including hypervisors, virtualization, resource partitioning, inter-VM communication, boot, and secure boot.
• Architect a multi-operating-system foundation for embedded Linux, Yocto-based distributions, Android, and QNX on shared vehicle compute platforms.
• Establish safety architecture covering partition isolation, health monitoring, fault detection, recovery, cybersecurity, and functional-safety integration.
• Define container and workload-management capabilities, including isolation, lifecycle management, resource governance, and updateability.
• Own system-level performance across compute efficiency, latency, boot time, memory footprint, and deterministic behavior.
• Lead technology-selection decisions, supplier relationships, technical investigations, architecture reviews, and mentorship across multiple engineering teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least 15 years of embedded, kernel-level, or systems software development experience with production-grade systems.
• Experience architecting operating-system or virtualization platforms for high-performance or safety-critical systems.
• Deep expertise in at least two areas including Type 1 hypervisors, real-time operating systems, embedded Linux internals, secure boot, and platform integrity.
• Strong knowledge of Arm SoC architecture, memory management, interrupt and I/O virtualization, and hardware-enforced isolation.
• Experience leading cross-functional technical programs and proficiency with Git, GitHub, CI/CD, automated testing, and performance profiling.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Architecture experience with Gunyah, QNX Hypervisor, Xen, KVM/Arm, or virtio-based device virtualization.
• Automotive functional-safety experience, including ASIL decomposition, safety-island architecture, and freedom-from-interference arguments.
• Experience with container runtimes, workload orchestration, Yocto, AOSP, Android Automotive, QNX SDP, AUTOSAR, SOAFEE, OTA, or continuous-update architectures.
• Contributions to open-source virtualization or operating-system projects and experience setting technical vision across organizations.

Culture & Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision coverage with HSA and FSA options.
• Retirement savings plans, paid vacation, holidays, life insurance, and employee assistance programs.
• Tuition assistance and GM vehicle discounts.
• Relocation benefits are available for qualifying candidates under company policy.
• Hybrid work with regular onsite collaboration and cross-functional technical forums.

Hiring process

• Role-related assessments and pre-employment screening may be required.