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Salary: USD 90,000 - 135,000 / annual
CLEAR is building a secure identity platform transforming how people live, work, and travel. With over 43 million members and a global partner network, CLEAR operates thousands of kiosks and connected devices that form the backbone of member experiences at airports, stadiums, and everyday locations.
You will join the Hardware Operations and Platform Engineering team, sitting at the intersection of Site Reliability Engineering and Embedded Systems Integration. Your mission is to architect and maintain the software layer that keeps thousands of Linux-based kiosks online, healthy, and self-healing—effectively operating a distributed server fleet at the edge.
Key responsibilities include:
- Architect and implement OS-level watchdogs, process monitors, and self-healing mechanisms to ensure devices automatically recover from failures (service restarts, reboots, or rollbacks)
- Manage and enhance the OTA (over-the-air) update framework to enable safe, atomic updates via A/B partition swapping and automated rollback when needed
- Develop and maintain Python-based services that interact with connected peripherals (payment terminals, scanners, sensors) via vendor SDKs and serial interfaces
- Own and maintain the custom Linux image (via Yocto, Buildroot, bootc, rpm-ostree, etc.), managing systemd units, udev rules, and security policies for a locked-down, production-grade environment
- Build lightweight monitoring agents to stream logs, metrics, and telemetry (connectivity, performance, temperature) to centralized observability systems such as Datadog or Splunk
- Work closely with software, SRE, and field operations teams to identify pain points and develop scalable solutions that improve reliability and ease of maintenance
This role offers end-to-end ownership of machine reliability from OS image to telemetry pipeline, massive impact ensuring millions of travelers experience CLEAR's platform without disruption, and the unique technical challenge of operating and scaling distributed edge infrastructure at the intersection of IoT and reliability engineering.
CLEAR offers comprehensive benefits including healthcare plans, family-building support, flexible time off, wellness stipends, free OneMedical memberships, CLEAR Plus membership, and a 401(k) with employer match. The office environment is bright and energetic with catered lunches daily and fully stocked kitchens.
Requirements:
- 3+ years of hands-on experience administering embedded Linux systems
- Strong proficiency in Python for system automation, service orchestration, and hardware communication
- Familiarity with A/B update mechanisms (RAUC, Mender, SWUpdate, or custom partition-switching logic)
- Experience with serial communications (UART, RS-232, USB-serial) and SDK-based hardware integration
- Deep knowledge of service dependencies, timers, and watchdog configuration
- Familiarity with network observability and remote device management at fleet scale
- Committed to operational excellence, focused on designing for resilience, testability, and safe rollback
- Collaborative, pragmatic, and curious; equally comfortable debugging a kiosk in the field or improving CI/CD for edge devices
