Technical Lead – Rust (Safety-Critical Real-Time Systems)

Job Title: Technical Lead – Rust

Location: Mountainview, CA

Duration: 12 months

Domain: Automotive / Embedded Systems
Experience: 8+ years in embedded software development, with 3+ years in technical leadership
Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Embedded Systems

Job Summary

We are looking for an experienced Technical Lead – Rust to design and develop safety-critical embedded software for automotive real-time systems. The ideal candidate will have strong expertise in Rust, embedded software development, real-time operating systems, and functional safety standards.

You will lead the architecture and development of low-level platform software, middleware, device drivers, communication stacks, and safety-critical applications running on MCU, MPU, or heterogeneous multicore platforms.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and review safety-critical embedded software using Rust.

• Lead software architecture and define system interfaces and technical specifications.

• Develop low-level platform components, middleware, device drivers, and system services.

• Build deterministic, high-performance real-time applications while optimizing memory footprint, startup time, and CPU utilization.

• Apply functional safety principles and support ISO 26262 compliance, including ASIL-B/C/D systems.

• Support safety analysis activities, including FMEA, FMEDA, FTA, and DFA.

• Develop interrupt-safe, multithreaded, and lock-free components; analyze worst-case execution time (WCET).

• Implement secure boot, memory-safe architectures, and secure coding practices.

• Integrate Rust components with C/C++, AUTOSAR, Embedded Linux, QNX, and RTOS platforms.

• Drive code reviews, unit and integration testing, debugging, CI/CD, and automated quality gates.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver reliable, secure, and maintainable embedded software.

Required Technical Skills

Rust Programming

• Strong expertise in Rust, including ownership, borrowing, lifetimes, traits, and generics.

• Embedded Rust and no_std development.

• Unsafe Rust review, containment, and FFI integration with C/C++.

• Async programming and Cargo workspace management.

Embedded Systems and Architecture

• Bare-metal programming and MCU/MPU architecture.

• ARM Cortex-M, Cortex-R, and Cortex-A processors.

• Board Support Packages (BSP), device drivers, memory-mapped peripherals, DMA, interrupts, and watchdogs.

Real-Time Operating Systems

• Experience with one or more of the following: FreeRTOS, Zephyr, SafeRTOS, AUTOSAR OS, QNX, or RT Linux.

• Strong understanding of hard real-time constraints, scheduling, concurrency, and deterministic system behavior.

Communication Protocols

• SPI, I2C, UART, CAN/CAN-FD, Ethernet, TCP/IP, SOME/IP, DDS, BLE, or UWB.

Functional Safety and Quality

• ISO 26262 and ASIL-B/C/D development.

• MISRA, ASPICE, static analysis, and safety-oriented software development.

• Understanding of formal verification concepts and safety case development.

Development Tools

• Git/Gerrit, Jenkins/GitHub Actions, CMake/Bazel, QEMU, Lauterbach, Vector CANoe, and SonarQube.

Preferred Qualifications

• Automotive ECU, controller, gateway, cockpit, or other safety-critical product development experience.

• AUTOSAR Classic/Adaptive, secure ECU communication, vehicle networking, and Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) architectures.

• Hardware Security Module (HSM) integration, secure boot, and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE).

• Experience with hypervisors, mixed-criticality systems, multicore safety architectures, cryptography, or formal methods.

• Familiarity with safety-qualified Rust toolchains.

• Strong C/C++ development background, particularly in systems transitioning to Rust.

Experience and Leadership

• 8+ years of embedded software development experience.

• 3+ years of technical leadership, architecture ownership, or mentoring engineering teams.

• Experience delivering safety-certified products and working with functional safety requirements.

• Strong debugging, system-level problem-solving, technical decision-making, and code review skills.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate combines hands-on Rust expertise with deep embedded systems and real-time engineering knowledge. They understand functional safety requirements, can evaluate and justify unsafe Rust usage, and have experience delivering reliable automotive software under strict timing, memory, and safety constraints.