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Apptronik is a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered humanoid robots (Apollo) to support humanity across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and beyond. The company operates at the cutting edge of applied AI, tackling the full robotics stack from safety and commercialization to mass production.
You will own the board support package (BSP) and OS configuration for the NVIDIA Jetson Thor compute platform in our humanoid robots. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on deep embedded systems expertise.
Key responsibilities:
- Develop and maintain the BSP for NVIDIA Jetson Thor modules and custom carrier boards, including board bring-up, device tree, pinmux, and peripheral enablement
- Customize and maintain the boot chain (firmware, UEFI, OS loader), kernel or QNX microkernel configuration, and out-of-tree kernel modules or QNX resource managers and drivers
- Build and maintain OS images (Linux via Yocto or JetPack/Ubuntu, and/or QNX via QNX SDP) with reproducible, CI-driven builds
- Tune the OS for real-time and low-latency behavior, including PREEMPT_RT, CPU isolation, IRQ affinity, QNX scheduling and partitioning, and power and thermal profiles
- Own OS lifecycle tooling: JetPack/NVIDIA BSP upgrades, A/B OTA updates, secure boot, disk encryption, and fleet flashing and provisioning
- Triage lab and field issues such as boot failures, kernel panics, driver regressions, and thermal throttling
- Define new hardware requirements and review schematics and layout with the hardware team
- Work cross-functionally with Hardware, Robot Software, QA, Validation, and Manufacturing teams to bring up compute hardware from prototype through production
- Participate in code reviews, design reviews, and pair debugging to raise the bar for platform quality
As you grow on the team, you will contribute to the architectural direction of the compute platform alongside your peers.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience
- Minimum 5 years of experience building, debugging, and shipping embedded systems using Linux and/or QNX
- Hands-on experience with NVIDIA Jetson (Thor or Orin) and JetPack, including flashing and carrier board customization
- Strong OS-level skills: Linux kernel configuration, device tree, driver development and debugging, kernel upgrades or backports
- Experience with Yocto, Buildroot, or comparable image build system
- Solid understanding of the boot process: bootloaders, initramfs, and rootfs layout
- Proficiency in C/C++; working knowledge of Python or Bash for tooling, and Git
- Strong hardware debugging skills using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and JTAG/serial debug
- Ability to read and interpret system schematics and hardware datasheets
- Working knowledge of embedded networking protocols such as CAN, EtherCAT, and Ethernet
- Familiarity with embedded Linux security fundamentals such as secure boot, PKI, and hardware key storage
- Experience writing and understanding technical specifications
- Strong collaboration and communication skills, with a desire to grow technical leadership within a team setting
PREFERRED/NICE-TO-HAVE:
- Experience with QNX Neutrino, including SDP, BSP development, and resource managers
- Experience with real-time Linux tuning such as PREEMPT_RT
- Experience with humanoid robotics, industrial robotics, or other high-performance real-time systems
- Experience with CUDA, TensorRT, and container environments on Jetson
- Experience with OTA update frameworks (RAUC, SWUpdate, Mender) and fleet provisioning
- Familiarity with ROS 2 and DDS middleware
- Familiarity with safety-critical embedded system design standards, including ISO 26262
- Contributions to upstream kernel or open-source BSP projects
