Software Engineer — C++ / Systems Programming (Audio) – Basic salary £55k Hybrid HQ -Central London Our client is looking for a pragmatic systems engineer who loves building fast, reliable software that talks to real hardware. You’ll work alongside product designers, embedded/EE, and application developers to ship maintainable, high-performance systems for professional audio. What you’ll be doing • Designing and implementing robust, maintainable C++ systems (C++17/20). • Building efficient, asynchronous services (event loops, concurrency, IPC, networking). • Managing complex toolchains (cross-compilers, CMake/Bazel), packaging, and versioning workflows (Git, trunk-based or GitFlow). • Owning CI/CD pipelines and release engineering for smooth delivery. • Writing rigorous automated tests (unit/integration/functional) with coverage and reliability gates. • Profiling and debugging in production-like environments (perf, valgrind, ASan/TSan/UBSan, heap/CPU profilers). • Collaborating tightly with hardware and firmware teams to integrate software with real devices. What we’d love you to bring: • Strong background in modern C++ (required): templates, STL, concurrency, RAII, move semantics. • Solid Linux systems programming: sockets, filesystems, epoll/kqueue, threads, timers, IPC. • Experience with secure systems design (threat modeling, least privilege, secrets, sandboxing). • Familiarity with embedded Linux development (Yocto/Buildroot, cross-compilation, init/services). • Interest in audio software, plug-ins, and AoIP (Audio over IP). Nice to have • Rust experience (or a serious interest in learning it); FFI with C/C++. • Real-time considerations (low-latency I/O paths, jitter budgets, lock-free structures). • Networking for media: multicast, PTP/IEEE-1588, AES67/RAVENNA/Dante/AVB-TSN. • Audio domain exposure: plugin formats (VST3/AU/AAX), DSP pipelines, JACK/ALSA/CoreAudio/ASIO. • Observability/tooling: metrics/logging/tracing, crash capture, OTA/firmware update infrastructure. • Internal tools and partner portals: small web backends (C++/Rust/Python) to support ops/dev. What we’re looking for • Software engineering background (degree or equivalent professional experience). • Ability to design and deliver well-structured, maintainable systems end-to-end. • Comfortable collaborating across disciplines with designers, software engineers, and hardware engineers. • Ownership mindset: you ship, measure, and iterate. How they work! • Small, hands-on R&D team; high autonomy, clear accountability. • Code reviews, automated test gates, and CI as non-negotiables. • Bias to simplicity, performance, and excellent DX (developer experience). Additional information • HQ location: London • Employment type: Full-time • Laptop and relevant software provided