(Senior) Generalist Software Engineer

About the role

Fotokite is a Zurich-based technology company building tethered drones for first responders and defence, developing its full drone stack in-house. As a (Senior) Generalist Software Engineer, you focus on Linux-level software for the Sigma ground station running on the NVIDIA Jetson platform, from the base image and system services to image and video processing. You also work on manufacturing tooling and cloud services, mainly in Go and Python, with a high degree of autonomy.

Key responsibilities

• Develop Linux-level software for the Sigma ground station on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX: system services, networking, device configuration, security hardening and the configuration interface.
• Build and optimise image and video processing on the Jetson.
• Build and operate cloud services and internal tools in Go and Python on Google Cloud, such as fleet management, production APIs, over-the-air update services and log pipelines.
• Automate with Bash and Python: Docker images, CI pipelines on GitHub, dependency and toolchain updates and a reliable release process.
• Escalate for customer support, production and software alerts: analyse logs and fleet data, distinguish hardware faults from software bugs, reproduce issues on real hardware and deliver fixes.

Required profile

• Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• 4+ years of professional software development experience.
• Strong Linux system knowledge (systemd, package management, networking, users and permissions, boot process, remote debugging via SSH).
• Strong networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DHCP, routing, VLANs, firewalls, tcpdump, Wireshark).
• Hands-on experience with Docker, Git/GitHub and CI/CD.
• Experience building backend services and internal tools (REST APIs, SQL databases).
• Generalist mindset, quick to learn new codebases, fluent English (other languages a plus).

Nice to have

• Jetson platform experience (L4T, device trees, CUDA) and video streaming (RTSP, WebRTC).
• Linux image/video processing (GStreamer, OpenCV, V4L2).
• Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run, BigQuery) and Terraform.
• Drones or robotics experience (MAVLink, PX4, ROS), Windows development (C++, Qt), manufacturing test setups, cellular modems, and regulatory frameworks (NDAA, CE/CRA, RemoteID).