Senior/Staff Systems Engineer, Foundations

Senior/Staff Systems Engineer, Foundations | Software
Palo Alto, CA (on-site)

About 1X
We build humanoid robots that work alongside people to solve labor shortages and create abundance.

The Role
NEO is our humanoid robot that walks into homes, learns from video, and works alongside people. As a C Systems Engineer, you will own the foundational software that powers its brain and nervous system. You’ll design and maintain the real-time C infrastructure that drives sensor fusion, motor control, inter-process communication, and system-level libraries. Your work will directly affect how robots perceive, plan, and act in the real world—with code executing thousands of times per second on safety-critical hardware.

You Will

• Design and implement low-latency, high-throughput systems in modern C for resource-constrained hardware

• Own and maintain real-time infrastructure including sensor fusion pipelines, motor control interfaces, deterministic schedulers, and shared foundational libraries

• Develop and optimize IPC and serialization layers such as lock-free queues, memory pools, and shared-memory buffers to connect perception, planning, and actuation

• Establish performance baselines using microbenchmarks, flamegraphs, performance counters, and regression tracking to ensure consistency under load

• Debug complex system-level issues including ABI mismatches, linking errors, kernel interfaces, and cross-compilation challenges

• Build deterministic systems with clean failure modes and interfaces that enable reliable development by other engineering teams

• Ship robust code that runs not just in prototypes, but across thousands of deployed robots in homes and warehouses

Must Have

• 5 years of experience developing production-grade C in performance-critical environments such as robotics, autonomous systems, game engines, compilers, or high-frequency trading

• Deep understanding of system-level constraints including latency, memory usage, bandwidth, and startup time—and the ability to design within those constraints

• Proficiency with Unix/Linux development environments, including shells, GNU tools, and system interfaces

• Experience shipping real-time systems where software reliability directly impacts physical behavior

• Strong debugging and profiling skills at the systems level, with expertise in benchmarking, tracing, and use of Linux kernel interfaces

• Ability to write clean, maintainable, and high-performance code with clear interfaces and minimal dependencies

Benefits & Compensation

• Salary Range: $156,400 – $253,000 Equity

• Health, dental, and vision insurance

• 401(k) with company match

• Paid time off and holidays

Equal Opportunity Employer
1X is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, medical condition, genetic information, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.

Salary : $156,400 - $253,000