About the role

Philips Hue is one of the world’s leading smart-lighting ecosystems, and the Hue Bridge is its heart — the always-on Linux device that connects millions of lights, sensors, and switches to the app and the cloud. We’re looking for a Linux Software Engineer to join the team that owns the Hue Bridge software platform: the embedded Linux base, its connectivity and security stack, and the firmware-update mechanism that keeps a global fleet healthy and up to date.

This is device-side Linux engineering on a real product. You’ll work close to the metal (bootloaders, secure boot, Yocto images) and close to the network (MQTT, TLS, BLE onboarding), and you’ll talk to our cloud engineers at the seam where the device meets the fleet. If you like owning a platform end to end — from how it boots to how it updates in the field — this is that job.

What You’ll Do:

• Develop, test, and integrate software components for the Hue Bridge on embedded Linux (Yocto).
• Own parts of the platform: bootloader/secure-boot flow, OS image, OTA/firmware update, and on-device connectivity (MQTT, TLS, BLE/Wi-Fi onboarding).
• Build and harden the firmware update mechanism — robust, rollback-safe updates across product variants and a live fleet.
• Improve fleet health and operational cost using data from the field: reproduce field failures, root-cause them, and design out whole classes of incidents.
• Work with cloud engineers on device-management infrastructure (secure remote control, diagnostics, reboot).
• Improve how we build and ship: CI pipelines, reproducible builds, developer tooling.
• Explore the full IoT stack, from device to cloud, and help shape our engineering practices.

What you’ll work with:

You will be working with the SW stack of the Bridge platform, spanning C, Bash, Python, Rust, and Scheme, alongside a C#/Bazel integration-test stack. Yocto (and OpenWRT-style image assembly), GitLab CI, U-Boot, and a secure-boot/signing toolchain round out the environment. A functional-programming background is a strong bonus – we value the design discipline it brings.

What you need:

We’re looking for a software engineer with a passion for connected products. You likely have several of the following – not all:

• Strong software-design instincts: you build simple, robust, elegant systems and know when not to add complexity.
• Solid C on Linux and fluency with Bash and Python – comfort in a Linux userspace (daemons, IPC, networking, the toolchain).
• Experience with embedded Linux build systems – Yocto and/or OpenWRT (images, recipes, layers).
• Experience with connectivity, networking, and IoT, and an understanding of network security (TLS, secure boot, key management).
• A data-driven approach to product quality – you let field evidence guide what you fix.
• A functional-programming background (Scheme or similar) is a strong bonus.
• Working knowledge of Rust is useful for our platform components; willingness to explore new languages and tools counts for more.
• Good written and verbal English and genuinely good communication.
• Team player, proactive, happy working with sharp peers in a collaborative, fast-moving environment.

Why this team

• One of the world’s leading smart-lighting ecosystems, with real scale and real users.
• A platform you own end to end – boot to OTA to fleet.
• Room to grow across the full device-to-cloud stack and to shape how we work.