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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Xenon Engineer

💰 $ - $

EngineeringSystemsFirmwareCloudPlatform

🎯 Role Definition

The Xenon Engineer is a cross-functional systems and platform engineer responsible for architecting, building, and operating the Xenon platform — spanning firmware, operating system-level components, device drivers, cloud integration, observability, and performance optimization. This role requires deep systems knowledge (Linux kernel, device drivers, networking), hands-on firmware and hardware interfacing capabilities, and strong software engineering practices (CI/CD, automated testing, telemetry). The ideal candidate partners with product management, QA, and platform teams to deliver production-grade, secure, and highly available Xenon services and devices.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Embedded Systems Engineer
  • Firmware Engineer
  • Systems Software Engineer

Advancement To:

  • Senior Xenon Engineer / Staff Engineer
  • Principal Platform Engineer
  • Engineering Manager / Technical Lead

Lateral Moves:

  • Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
  • Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
  • Security Engineer (Device & Platform Security)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Architect, design, and implement core components of the Xenon platform, including low-level firmware, OS-level services, and device drivers, with a focus on reliability, security, and maintainability.
  • Lead development of high-performance, production-grade system software (C/C++, Rust, or equivalent) that interfaces directly with hardware and SoCs, ensuring deterministic behavior and minimal latency.
  • Build and maintain robust firmware upgrade and recovery mechanisms for Xenon devices, ensuring safe, atomic, and auditable over-the-air (OTA) updates at scale.
  • Design and implement secure boot flows, key management, and hardware-rooted trust mechanisms for Xenon devices to meet compliance and threat-model requirements.
  • Collaborate with hardware, FPGA, and PCB teams to define interfaces (PCIe, SPI, I2C, UART) and bring up new Xenon hardware while debugging electrical, timing, and protocol-level issues.
  • Integrate Xenon platform components with cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure) for telemetry, device management, analytics, and remote diagnostics while maintaining network resilience and privacy controls.
  • Implement and maintain device drivers and kernel modules for Linux (or RTOS) with comprehensive unit, integration, and system tests to sustain a secure and stable platform.
  • Own performance profiling and optimization across the full stack (firmware, kernel, middleware, cloud) including CPU, memory, IO throughput, and power consumption measurement and tuning.
  • Design, build, and operate observability and telemetry pipelines for Xenon, including structured logging, tracing (OpenTelemetry), metrics, and alerting to accelerate debugging and SLA achievement.
  • Define and enforce software architecture, coding standards, and best practices across the Xenon engineering organization, mentoring junior engineers and participating in code reviews.
  • Drive CI/CD pipelines and automation to enable reproducible builds, automated tests, static analysis, firmware signing, and safe releases for Xenon products.
  • Create and maintain device provisioning, identity, and fleet management systems to securely onboard, track, and retire Xenon units across environments and geographies.
  • Lead root-cause analysis and post-incident reviews for production issues affecting Xenon devices or services, propose corrective actions, and execute remediation plans.
  • Collaborate with product managers and UX/Hardware teams to translate product requirements into technical specifications for the Xenon platform, balancing features with operational constraints.
  • Implement robust networking stacks and protocols on Xenon devices (TCP/IP, TLS, DTLS, MQTT, CoAP) and troubleshoot connectivity across constrained or enterprise networks.
  • Validate and harden Xenon against security threats by conducting threat modeling, static and dynamic security testing, and coordinating vulnerability disclosure and patching.
  • Drive cross-team initiatives to improve build times, test coverage, deployment velocity, and rollback safety for Xenon releases.
  • Create reproducible system images and platform artifacts, manage build artifacts lifecycle, and ensure backward compatibility of firmware and APIs where required.
  • Prototype and evaluate new technologies (new SoCs, network interfaces, acceleration hardware) to continuously modernize the Xenon platform and reduce cost/performance trade-offs.
  • Partner with QA and field operations to develop realistic test harnesses, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) setups, and lab automation that simulate real-world Xenon usage at scale.
  • Document architecture decisions, runbooks, operational procedures, and onboarding materials to reduce bus factor and accelerate team productivity.
  • Engage with customers and support teams to reproduce, prioritize, and remediate field issues, while providing clear technical guidance and timelines for fixes.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Participate in security reviews and compliance audits related to Xenon hardware and software.
  • Provide mentoring, technical interviews, and hiring feedback to grow a robust Xenon engineering team.
  • Contribute to developer experience tooling and internal libraries that accelerate Xenon feature development.
  • Assist in cost optimization analyses for cloud-hosted Xenon services, recommending architectural changes and auto-scaling strategies.
  • Maintain relationships with third-party vendors and open-source communities relevant to Xenon components and toolchains.
  • Support marketing and product teams with technical collateral, whitepapers, and performance benchmarks that showcase Xenon capabilities.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expert-level experience in systems programming with C/C++ and strong familiarity with Rust or Go for systems tooling.
  • Deep knowledge of Linux kernel internals, device driver development, kernel modules, and cross-compilation toolchains.
  • Practical experience with firmware development and bootloaders (U-Boot, Coreboot, or vendor-specific boot firmware).
  • Experience with secure boot, TPM, HSMs, cryptographic primitives, key provisioning, and signing workflows.
  • Solid understanding of embedded hardware interfaces (PCIe, I2C, SPI, UART), SoC architecture, and hardware bring-up procedures.
  • Hands-on experience building and operating CI/CD pipelines for embedded and platform software, including firmware signing & artifact promotion.
  • Proficiency with network protocols (TCP/IP, MQTT, HTTP/2, TLS), network stacks, and connectivity troubleshooting in constrained environments.
  • Strong skills in observability: metrics (Prometheus), tracing (OpenTelemetry), structured logging, and incident diagnostics.
  • Experience with cloud platforms and services (AWS IoT, GCP IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub) or building cloud-native device management solutions.
  • Familiarity with performance profiling tools and methodologies (perf, gdb, flamegraphs, latency SSE/PMU analysis).
  • Experience writing automated unit, integration, and system tests, and using test frameworks for embedded systems and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
  • Knowledge of containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) for platform services and edge deployment patterns.
  • Competence with version control, release management, and branching strategies at scale (Git workflows, mono-repos vs poly-repos).
  • Understanding of regulatory and compliance requirements relevant to hardware/software products (GDPR, SOC2, FCC/CE considerations).
  • Ability to design for observability, fault tolerance, and graceful degradation in distributed device fleets.

Soft Skills

  • Strong ownership mindset with the ability to drive ambiguous projects to completion and accept end-to-end responsibility.
  • Clear, concise technical communication for cross-functional stakeholders, including non-technical audiences and executive summaries.
  • Excellent debugging and problem-solving aptitude; patient and methodical when isolating complex system-level issues.
  • Collaborative team player who can coach peers, run productive code reviews, and align multiple teams on architectural decisions.
  • Prioritization and trade-off judgment: balance speed, cost, reliability, and security to deliver pragmatic solutions.
  • Comfortable working in fast-paced startup or scale-up environments with changing priorities and evolving product requirements.
  • Empathetic customer focus to translate field feedback into durable platform improvements and robust support artifacts.
  • Adaptable learner who rapidly acquires new hardware, languages, and platform tools as the Xenon ecosystem evolves.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree or higher in Systems Engineering, Embedded Systems, Computer Science, or equivalent industry experience.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Electrical / Electronic Engineering
  • Computer Engineering
  • Embedded Systems
  • Cybersecurity

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–8+ years of hands-on experience in systems, firmware, embedded, or platform engineering roles; may vary by seniority level.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years building and shipping embedded systems or platform software in production environments, with demonstrable experience in device bring-up, kernel/driver development, and cloud integration. Experience working across hardware and cloud teams and a track record of leading cross-functional delivery is strongly preferred.
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