Senior Engineer I, Smart Switch Software Development

About the role

Senior Engineer I, Smart Switch Software Development

Department: Enterprise Engineering — Smart Switch Software Development Employment Type: Full-time

About NETGEAR

NETGEAR has been pioneering advanced networking technology since 1996, delivering innovative products that connect people to the internet, power businesses, and enable digital experiences. Our Smart Switch product line serves small-to-medium businesses and enterprises worldwide, offering advanced L2/L3 managed switching with cloud-based management through NETGEAR Insight. We are building a new engineering center in Chennai to drive the next generation of our smart switch firmware platform.

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Engineer I to join our Smart Switch firmware team in Chennai. You will be a technical anchor for the team — designing, developing, and maintaining embedded Linux firmware for NETGEAR's smart switch product families spanning 20+ SKUs across multiple hardware platforms.

This role sits at the intersection of hardware and software: you will work with switch ASIC SDKs, implement and optimize L2/L3 networking protocols, develop kernel modules, and ensure production-quality firmware for ARM64/MIPS-based networking devices. You will collaborate daily with the various engineering teams and have significant ownership over critical platform subsystems.

As the industry shifts toward agentic engineering — where engineers orchestrate AI coding agents to handle implementation while focusing their own expertise on architecture, system design, and validation — we expect this role to embrace AI-augmented workflows as a core part of daily development.

This is a high-impact role for someone who thrives on solving deep technical problems in embedded networking systems and leverages AI tools to amplify their productivity.

What You Will Do

- Platform & Architecture: Own and evolve the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) that bridges the switch ASIC SDK with application-layer software. Design and implement kernel modules for platform services including board support, network drivers, and hardware initialization.

- Protocol Development: Implement, debug, and optimize L2/L3 protocol state machines (STP, IGMP snooping, LLDP, LACP, 802.1X, GVRP, DAI) as kernel modules, ensuring conformance with IEEE and IETF standards.

- Stacking & Distributed Systems: Contribute to the multi-unit stacking feature set — topology management, member election, cross-unit configuration synchronization, firmware upgrade coordination, and hot-swap support.

- Cross-Platform Delivery: Develop and maintain firmware across multiple product families (ARM64 and MIPS architectures), coordinating changes across shared codebases to ensure consistency.

- Code Quality & Reviews: Conduct thorough code reviews, define coding standards for the team, and champion best practices in embedded C development. Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, memory leaks, and race conditions.