RT & Kernel Engineer

Your mission & challenges

We are scaling our real-time embedded Linux capability across NEURA's current and next-generation robot platforms — cobots, mobile manipulators, humanoids, quadrupeds, and the shared Compute Unit. This role owns the operating system, kernel, and board-support layer that every control and communication stack on these platforms depends on.

You will collaborate closely with the RT Communication Bus engineer, hardware, simulation, and safety / certification stakeholders to deliver platforms that are deterministic, maintainable, and suitable for a controlled product lifecycle.

• Real-time Linux platforms — both co-kernel and kernel-preemption approaches — including RT scheduling policy and interrupt-latency budgeting to meet the timing requirements of the control and estimation loops running on the platform (kHz-class whole-body control and high-rate state estimation).

• SOM board bring-up and the Yocto BSP for each robot platform hardware revision: boot flow, kernel configuration, device trees, and driver work at the C/C++ boundary, with hands-on debugging on real hardware.

• Yocto layers, recipes, and images for development, validation, and release; structured evaluations and migrations across multiple SoCs and board variants as hardware evolves.

• WCET analysis across RT loop configurations, and RT memory management practice (memory locking, huge pages, NUMA-aware allocation, priority inversion avoidance).

• Co-review of WCET budgets and cycle timing with the RT Communication Bus engineer at the OS / fieldbus boundary, ensuring scheduling, interrupt, and synchronisation assumptions hold under load.

• Safety integration at the kernel level (e.g. E-stop chain wiring, ISO 10218 safety PLC integration); design participation, documentation, and traceability for controlled change practices.

• Build, flash, and test automation; technical documentation kept current for the wider engineering organisation.

What we can look forward to

• Embedded Linux BSP engineering background with hands-on Yocto / OpenEmbedded experience on production hardware.

• Hands-on real-time Linux kernel patching and tuning experience, with practical scheduling-oriented reasoning (SCHED_FIFO/RR, priorities, affinity, interrupt path).

• Working knowledge of WCET analysis methodology and tooling (e.g. OTAWA, Chronos, or vendor equivalents).

• Solid C and C++ at the kernel/driver boundary; device tree authoring; practical scripting for engineering workflows.