Software Engineer

**Software Engineer: Networking & Hardware-in-the-Loop**
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First Order Effects · Austin, TX

**Who We Are**
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First Order Effects (FOE) is building America's Infrastructure Prime for the robotic era. Autonomous ships, drones, and robots are rewriting how the world moves, fights, and builds - but none of them work without infrastructure to power them, connect them, and launch and recover them. That's what we build.

**We've Built Cutting Edge Systems at Legendary Companies**
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Our team comes from SpaceX, Anduril, Saronic, Lockheed Skunk Works, Forterra, and Fuse Energy. Before founding FOE, we built satellite ground stations that closed a national comms gap in days, deployed multi-megawatt power systems at commercial speed, and shipped autonomous surface vessels into Navy fleet production. We've built infrastructure at lightspeed before - now we're applying that playbook to an entire company.

**The Role**
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* Own the network inside Surge Hub, our rapidly deployable power system. Take today's early design and turn it into a secure, production-ready architecture.
* Segment traffic so control traffic stays isolated, while the devices that need internet connectivity get a clean, secure path out.
* Build for uptime: backup WAN, failover, and a network that holds when a link drops in the field.
* Design with security in mind from the first switch, not as a retrofit.
* Own the hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) test network in our Austin warehouse. Bring every Surge Hub component onto one test network and drive it with your code.
* Write portable test and automation software for Surge Hub and its test equipment, and integrate it with the product's C/C++ firmware and software.
* Build it from the ground up. You pick the equipment, set the architecture, and own the result.

**What You'll Do**
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* Design, build, and own HITL test systems: rack the hardware, connect it, and make software test it for real.
* Configure and maintain real networks, including switches, routers, VLANs, subnets, and firewalls, on hardware that ships.
* Live in Linux day to day.
* Write automation and test code in Python.
* Take projects from idea to outcome without waiting for a spec. Two or more years doing this on hardware products counts for more than a long resume of adjacent work.
* Bring a degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or the shipped work that proves the same.

**What We're Looking For**
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* Network security depth: segmentation, hardening, firewall policy, and secure remote access.
* C and C++. Surge Hub firmware and software are written in them.
* A background in hardware or embedded products: power, aerospace, automotive, robotics, or defense. The domain matters less than the hardware.
* Startup experience, or time at a hard-tech company where you owned more than your title said.

**Compensation**
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$140,000–$200,000 base + equity + benefits.

**ITAR requirement**
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To conform to U.S. Government export regulations (ITAR/EAR), applicants must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3). Candidates must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance; active clearance not required.