Software Engineer

About the role

Onodrim is building Europe's largest defence and industrial platform. We acquire specialist manufacturers in critical defence and dual-use supply chains, then invest behind their growth with capital, technology and operating know-how.

OnodrimX is our internal R&D unit. It builds the products and technologies the platform needs and that no one in our supply chain makes yet – sensor, compute and communications systems that combine hardware, firmware and software – and takes them from concept through prototype to demonstration with real users. Software Engineers in OnodrimX write most of the code that makes those systems work.

This is a generalist role in a small team. On one programme you'll be writing firmware for a sensor node and the pipeline that turns its data into detections; on another, the software that runs on a vehicle-mounted compute unit and talks to radios, other vehicles and a command-and-control system; on a third, the tooling that lets us test all of it in the field. You'll sit next to the hardware engineers, debug across the boundary, and be at the demonstrations when the system has to work.

You'll report to the Head of R&D and work closely with the Programme Managers, our Forward Deployed Engineers and – as programmes mature – the engineering teams at the manufacturers we acquire, who will take what you built into production.

What you'll do

• Build the software in the system. Write firmware and embedded Linux software for sensor and compute hardware, the services that run on it, and the data pipelines and processing that turn raw signals into something useful.
• Integrate across the boundary. Bring up new boards with the hardware engineers, write drivers and interfaces for radios, sensors and peripherals, and debug problems that live between the schematic and the code.
• Connect to the outside world. Implement the interfaces to tactical networks, command-and-control and situational-awareness systems, data platforms and partner equipment that our systems have to plug into.
• Own a work package. Take a sub-system from the programme plan, scope it with the Head of R&D, estimate it, build it, test it and integrate it on the milestone date.
• Make it testable. Build the tooling, simulators, logging and automated tests that let the team iterate quickly in the lab and trust what they take to the field.
• Support trials and demonstrations. Travel to test sites and customer demonstrations, keep the system running under real conditions, and feed what breaks back into the next iteration.
• Prepare for production. Keep builds reproducible, interfaces documented and configuration explicit so that a manufacturer can take the software over, flash it, test it and support it.
• Use the modern toolchain. Apply data platforms and LLM-based tooling where they make the team faster, and have a view on where they don't.
• Raise the bar. Review others' code, share what you learn, and help onboard the engineers who join after you.

Requirements

What you'll bring

• A degree in computer science, software or electrical engineering, or a closely related discipline – or an equivalent track record of shipped systems.
• 3+ years as a software engineer, with real experience on at least two of: embedded/firmware, embedded Linux and systems programming, data pipelines and signal or sensor processing, networking and protocols, backend services.
• Strong in a modern programming language and willing to learn whatever the platform needs.
• Familiarity with AI coding tools and ability to understand how to best make use of them
• Hands-on with hardware: you have brought up a board, read a datasheet, used a scope or logic analyser, and debugged a problem that turned out to be electrical.
• Comfort with Linux at the system level – build systems, cross-compilation, networking, performance – and with modern engineering practice: version control, CI, automated tests, code review.
• A builder's mindset: you prefer a working prototype this week to a complete design next month, and you finish what you start.
• Clear, direct communication in English, written and spoken, with engineers and non-engineers.
• Willingness to travel within Europe for trials and demonstrations, with occasional travel to the US.
• Right to work in the UK, Switzerland or the EU, and eligibility for a national security clearance in at least one of our operating countries.

Nice to have

• We operate our business in English but fluency in one or more additional European languages is beneficial.
• Experience with RTOS or bare-metal firmware on ARM microcontrollers, or with Yocto/Buildroot-style embedded Linux images.
• Signal processing or machine-learning experience on sensor data – detection, classification, tracking – including running models on edge hardware.
• Familiarity with radios and tactical networking: software-defined radio, mesh protocols, cellular modules, or tactical data links and situational-awareness tools.
• Experience integrating with enterprise data platforms, or building LLM-backed tooling on top of operational data.
• Time at a hardware start-up, a robotics or drone company, or a research lab where you built a working system with a small team.
• Military service or other first-hand exposure to how defence systems are used in the field.
• An existing national security clearance.