Staff SWE - Networking

Staff SWE - Networking

Somana is a generative robotics company. We founded the company because the incredible advances in the modeling layer have no way to access a fragmented physical world. We're building the connective tissue that brings physical AI into the industrial world.

Somana is a hardware, software, and services platform powering rapid improvements in capacity, throughput, yield, and quality. Our compute platform will talk to hundreds of peripherals, survive factory floors, and keep getting smarter - which means the network fabric that binds modems, WiFi, sensors, cameras, switches, and compute subsystems together is as critical as the silicon itself. If you have a passion for solving hard distributed systems problems under real-world constraints — bandwidth-limited RF links, dynamic topologies, strict latency requirements — then this role is for you.

ROLE OVERVIEW

As a Staff Networking Engineer, you will own the software architecture and hands-on implementation of the core networking and communication systems that power our family of compute products. You will be the subject-matter expert for all things L1-L4, who still reads schematics, reviews driver code, debugs packet traces, and cares deeply about interrupt latency. You will be the one who knows whether a timing issue is in the PHY, the driver, or the scheduler - because you've been in that exact fight before on products at scale.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Design and improve the networking software stack, from prototype through high-volume production and field deployment, to operate reliably, securely, and compliantly

• Define and own the L1-L4 networking architecture across heterogeneous interfaces

• Manage scalability and performance tuning of multi-interface networks under real-world factory conditions; optimize for bandwidth, latency, jitter, and power

• Serve as the primary technical interface between software, electrical, and firmware engineering teams, ensuring that networking constraints are resolved as a unified system across varied environments

• Drive hardware bring-up and validation of networking subsystems, from BSP integration through driver development, protocol tuning, and production diagnostics

• Own field reliability of the network stack: packet loss budgets, failover logic, HA, OTA pipelines, and degraded-mode behavior when factory conditions are not perfect

• Establish design standards, documentation, and code review norms appropriate for a team that is moving fast but shipping hardware that has to last

PRIMARY QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related

• Proficiency in a systems programming language (Rust, C, C++, or Go)

• 5+ years of professional experience designing, implementing, and shipping networking, robotics middleware, or embedded software systems at scale

• Demonstrated track record of owning network architecture across multiple physical interfaces - you have shipped products that had to coordinate cellular, WiFi, Ethernet, and/or sensor/camera links under one software stack

• Deep hands-on experience with Nix or Linux networking internals, user space development, and multi-threading or concurrent programming

• Proven ability to debug at the hardware/software boundary: protocol analyzers, oscilloscopes, JTAG, packet traces, and vendor BSPs are tools you have actually used to solve real problems

• Strong systems intuition and communication skills
  

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Experience building networking systems for compute or edge platforms that operate in challenging physical environments: industrial IoT, energy storage, wireless mesh networks, or cloud-edge connectivity

• Comfort with manufacturing and production processes for networking hardware: RF validation, certification awareness (FCC/CE), DFM considerations for antenna and connector placement, and production test harness design

• Enjoy reading / research in the field of robotics, computer vision, sensor fusion, or similar

LOCATION & COMPENSATION:

• San Francisco, CA OR SoHo, New York City

• Competitive salary + meaningful equity - this is a foundational role on a small team

• Catered lunch, snacks, panoramic views, and pet-friendly office

• Health, Dental, Vision benefits + 401k