Staff Engineer

Life at Plume

At Plume, we believe that technology isn't about moving faster, it's about making life’s moments better. Which is why we’ve built the world's first, and only, open and hardware-independent service delivery platform for smart homes, small businesses, enterprises, and beyond. Our SaaS platform uses WiFi, advanced AI, and machine learning to create the future of connected spaces—and human experiences—at massive scale.

We now deliver services to over 60 million locations globally and have managed over 3 billion devices on our platform. We’re expanding rapidly, pioneering a new category, and we achieved our Series F funding in just four years. Our customers include many of the world's largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who look to Plume to help them evolve their smart home offerings while gleaning insights from their own data. 

With a bias for action and a love for being trailblazers, the team at Plume embodies a combination of relentless curiosity and imaginative innovation. We challenge ourselves to think in ways that other companies don't, work to do what should be done (rather than what can), and if we can’t do it exceptionally well, we don’t do it. It’s how we've assembled a team of world-class builders, thinkers, and doers. And it’s how we’re reinventing what’s possible every day.

This is a work-from-office / In-Office role based in our Hyderabad, India location.

Plume's Core Engineering team builds the open-standards firmware foundation of our platform across RDK-B, prplOS and OpenWRT and OpenSync. We are looking for a Staff Engineer to own the controller based broadband router firmware stack end to end: architecture, design, implementation, upstreaming
You will be the technical lead for various features like device management, network management, Wi-Fi and multi-AP mesh features such as backhaul management and steering, onboarding and metrics etc.
What you'll do

• Own architecture and design for various CPE features like EasyMesh, Wi-Fi Optimization, remote and local controller over standard SDK platforms like RDK-B, PrplOS, OpenWRT and OpenSync. This includes deep Wi-Fi sub-system management like backhaul link tracking, standard and hitless (make-before-break) backhaul steering, backhaul STA policies, and AP/STA metrics.
• Break large features into sequenced, reviewable work. Write design documents, feature matrices and validation reports that both engineers and program stakeholders can use.
• Maintain Plume's RDK-B Yocto layer and patch framework. Lead quarterly rebases onto new RDK-B releases and keep reference builds healthy on gateway and extender targets.
• Close gaps in TR-181 data models exposed through USP (obuspa) and UBus, RBus, including Wi-Fi DataElements, DHCP and DNS.
• Deliver onboarding flows: WPS, Wi-Fi EasyConnect (DPP) and backhaul onboarding, with WPA3/SAE, 6 GHz and Wi-Fi 7 MLO support.
• Triage and fix Alpha, Beta and GA blockers: mesh instability, IPv6 dual-stack and RA behavior, routing, firmware upgrade failures, and CPU and memory regressions. Back each fix with measured before/after data.
• Upstream fixes to opensource community like RDK Central, PrplOS, OpenWRT and evaluate competing community contributions against our own implementation.
• Contribute to cross-platform work on prplOS/prplMesh and OpenSync, including porting spikes and architecture comparisons.
• Review code and mentor engineers. Work closely with QA, program management and architects in other regions.

What you'll bring

• 10+ years building embedded Linux or networking firmware, with 4+ years on Wi-Fi or broadband CPE software.
• Strong C and C++ on Linux user space, plus shell scripting. Comfortable debugging on target with gdb, core dumps, /proc and packet captures.
• Hands-on RDK-B (e.g. CCSP components, RBus, OneWifi, WebConfig, and Yocto/BitBake builds) and PrplOS experiences
• Deep 802.11 knowledge: hostapd and wpa_supplicant, 802.11k/v/r and BTM, WPA3/SAE, 6 GHz, MLO.
• Working knowledge of EasyMesh and IEEE 1905.1: topology discovery, TLVs, controller/agent state machines and backhaul.
• TR-181 and USP/TR-369. TR-069 experience is a plus.
• Solid IP networking: IPv4/IPv6 dual stack, DHCPv4/v6, router advertisements, routing, netfilter/iptables and QoS.
• A track record of taking features from spike to GA, with written designs that others build from.
• Fluent in Git and GitHub pull-request workflows, quilt-style patch management and Jenkins CI.

About Plume

As the creator of the only open, hardware-independent, cloud-controlled experience platform for ISPs and their subscribers, Plume partners with over 400 ISP customers, including some of the world’s largest such as Charter, Liberty Global, and J:COM. 

Using OpenSync, the most widely supported open-source, silicon-to-cloud framework for smart spaces, Plume’s software-defined network allows ISPs to decouple their service offerings from hardware and rapidly curate and deliver new services over a multi-vendor, open-platform architecture.  

Plume is an equal opportunity workplace that maintains a continuing policy of nondiscrimination in all employment practices and decisions, ensuring equal employment opportunities for all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy, childbirth or related individual conditions, medical conditions (as defined by state law), military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law.