Associate Software Engineer, Embedded Development

Company: Relay
Location: Relay, Inc / Raleigh, NC

Relay is the Intelligent System of Action for the physical economy. While the digital revolution has often left the deskless workforce behind, we are closing that gap by transforming analog frontline operations into a data-rich, AI-powered ecosystem. We aren't just selling radios, we’re building the digital foundation for the 80% of the global workforce that doesn't work at a desk.

Why Join Relay?

A Proven Winner: Join a hyper-growth company trusted by over 10% of the Fortune 500, continuing to move upmarket with massive impact.

High Value, High Impact: With 47% of our revenue from $100K+ ARR customers and 135% Net Revenue Retention (NRR), you'll be joining a company rooted in value creation.

Market-Leading Innovation: The Relay platform captures 1 billion new data points weekly and features award-winning AI tools like TeamTranslate™, with 500% YoY growth.

World-Class Leadership: Our stellar leadership team is built to help us scale toward our next major milestones.

The Relay Culture: We’re dedicated to helping you do the best work of your life (BWIML), investing in your growth through L.I.T., living our CHASE values, and learning from incredibly talented, supportive teammates who make the work (and the wins) better every day.

Now, here’s what we’re building, and where you come in.

About the Role/Team

We're looking for an Associate Software Engineer to join our Embedded Development team. This is a small, high-performance team within a fast-growing organization where you'll have real ownership and responsibility from day one. You'll ramp up quickly, work across a broad and interesting tech stack, and have a direct impact on hundreds of thousands of physical devices in the hands of frontline workers.

At the heart of our stack is Android/AOSP — our embedded devices run custom builds of the Android Open Source Project, and you'll work directly in that environment. Beyond AOSP, our hardware spans a range of embedded platforms including STM32, nRF52/53, and ESP32, giving you exposure across both Linux-based and traditional bare-metal embedded systems. The full stack also touches cellular communication, voice processing, and AI — making this one of the broader embedded roles you'll find at the associate level.

This is a great opportunity for someone early in their career who's genuinely excited about how hardware and software come together, and who wants to solve real problems for real people.

What You’ll Do

• Collaborate closely with device, QA, platform suppliers, external companies, and third-party contractors to identify and resolve hardware and software issues.
• Debug issues across the Linux/Android stack — from userspace applications down to kernel interfaces, hardware abstraction layers, and device interactions.
• Build and maintain tooling to isolate and reproduce common application issues, accelerating debugging across internal and external teams. This includes designing in-house embedded test harnesses that drive our products programmatically — test and verification is a core focus of this role, especially early on.
• Work with a team to bring up new embedded products across our hardware platforms.
• Improve the efficiency of test and development processes across the organization.
• Write and execute black-box tests against both hardware and software systems.
• Work across a wide range of technologies and programming languages as the product evolves.

What You'll Have

• B.S. in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a related field.
• Hands-on comfort with Linux — navigating the filesystem, managing processes, reading logs, and debugging system behavior at the command line.
• A self-starter mindset with a genuine curiosity about how hardware and software systems work — and fail.
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage your own workload with minimal oversight.
• Clear, effective communication skills — including the ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders — and a collaborative approach to working across teams.

Nice To Have

• Experience with Android development or familiarity with AOSP (custom ROMs, the Android build system, or working with AOSP source are all great signals).
• Hands-on experience with embedded platforms like STM32, nRF52/53, or ESP32 — professional or personal.
• Linux experience in any context counts: running Linux as your daily driver, self-hosting servers, personal embedded projects, or tinkering with hardware like a Raspberry Pi all demonstrate the curiosity and comfort we're looking for.
• Exposure to cellular technologies or mobile network protocols.
• Familiarity with scripting languages (Python, Bash, or similar) for test automation.
• Experience writing or executing test cases for embedded or hardware systems.
• Prior work with version control or CI/CD tools (Git, Jenkins, etc.).

About Relay | Culture, Benefits & Perks

Our culture hinges on Relayers getting LIT up in an environment that fosters Learning, Impact, and Teamwork, where we CHASE the best work of our lives. We call this BWIML (Best Work In My Life).

At Relay, we offer:

• 100% Paid Insurance: Health, Dental, Vision, Long/Short Term Disability, and Life Insurance for you and your dependents
• Generous Paid Time Off
• 401(k) Savings Plan + Company Match
• Baby Cash Reward + Paid Parental Leave
• Wellness Perks: If you’re joining our Raleigh-based HQ, you’ll have access to a world-class onsite fitness center with instructor-led classes, plus tennis, basketball, pickleball, and cycling
• Team Events & Culture: From company celebrations to team outings, we work hard and have fun doing it.
• Latest tech, standing desks, and all the tools and software you need to thrive

The future of frontline work is being built here. Come build it with us. We can’t wait to hear from you.

The Relay Hybrid Work Model

At Relay, relationships are at the core of everything we do - and this translates to how we approach our customers and our work internally. Our relational approach is also at the heart of why we ask all Relayers in our hybrid model to work from the office a minimum of 3 days per week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If you are a leader at Relay, we ask that you are available to your teams and onsite fully in the office.

We use AI tools to transcribe and summarize interviews for internal hiring purposes. Transcripts are accessible only to authorized hiring personnel and retained consistent with our data retention policies. Candidates who prefer not to have AI notetaking used may request to opt out without impact to your candidacy. For more information, please see our Candidate and Employee Privacy Notice linked here.