Firmware Emulation Engineer (RTOS/Embedded) APPLIED AI RE RTOS/EMBEDDED QEMU STYX New York, NY [...]

Firmware Emulation Engineer (RTOS/Embedded) Zealot is deploying AI systems at the center of western cyber operations, backed by tier-1 US VCs and industry leaders. Our team includes alumni of Anthropic, xAI, and Anduril. Soon live with close U.S. allies abroad. APPLIED AI RE RTOS/EMBEDDED QEMU STYXCompensation 100K-195K + skin in the game equity Location New York, NY On SiteStage Early-stage startup backed by tier 1 investors. Small, growing team with exceptionally high ownership.+ Build the agentic systems that let Zealot automatically understand and emulate non-Linux embedded targets, the weird stuff nobody else touches.+ Reverse and rehost firmware from niche, obscure, and unconventional devices: printers, industrial controllers, point-of-sale terminals, calculators, Russian DSPs, smart appliances, and anything else with a chip and a pulse.+ Design workflows that can map boot logic, runtime dependencies, and peripheral stubs for proprietary RTOS and bare-metal environments with little or no documentation.+ Turn the manual art of cracking open strange devices into scalable, AI-driven capability.+ Hands-on reverse engineering experience with non-Linux embedded firmware, VxWorks, ThreadX, FreeRTOS, Nucleus, eCos, QNX, or proprietary/bare-metal environments.+ You've popped open devices most people would never think to look at, and you enjoyed it.+ Strong understanding of embedded boot flows, memory layouts, and peripheral interfaces across diverse architectures.+ Strong C/C++ or Rust skills for low-level systems work.+ Ability to work from zero documentation and rapidly build understanding from raw firmware dumps and runtime behavior. Nice to Have+ Experience with QEMU, Unicorn, or custom emulation harnesses for non-Linux targets.+ Proficiency with tools such as Ghidra, IDA, Binwalk, GDB, and JTAG/SWD debuggers.+ Experience patching firmware and building shims to stub out missing hardware dependencies.+ Familiarity with ARM, MIPS, AArch64, PowerPC, Xtensa, RISC-V, or other embedded architectures.+ Experience with niche device ecosystems, printers (HP, Lexmark, Brother), POS systems, Russian DSPs, building automation, medical devices, or similar.+ Experience building with LLMs and AI agents.+ The kind of person who buys random hardware at a thrift store just to take it apart.+ Genuinely excited about the weird corners of embedded, the stranger the device, the more interested you are.+ Clearly interested in stepping away from purely manual research and moving toward the development of AI systems.+ Building something massive matters more to you than comfort, titles, or predictability.+ You want to be early at a company that will change an industry, and you're ready to do what that actually takes. Note to recruiting firms: We want the person who lights up when they encounter a device running a proprietary RTOS nobody has documented. Strong RE fundamentals are the baseline, what sets candidates apart is breadth across weird, non-standard embedded targets and genuine curiosity about niche hardware. Ready?