Lead Software Engineer (Semiconductor Verification & Tooling)

We're Tropic Square https://www.tropicsquare.com, a Prague-based company designing open-source secure-element chips.

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our hybrid team and help drive a long-term, open-source project at the intersection of software and hardware in the semiconductor world. You'll own core infrastructure decisions, shape architecture, and grow into a technical leadership role.

If you're excited by deep technical problems with real-world impact, this might be the role for you.

👉 WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON

• Developing and expanding our automated flows and hardware modelling framework

• Building internal tooling and infrastructure that serves both the company and the wider open-source community

• Driving architectural decisions and the long-term technical direction of the codebase

• Exploring adjacent technical areas (verification, cybersecurity, EDA) as the work demands, with room to go deep where you're curious

• Collaborating with internal teams and external contributors in a public, technically demanding setting

✍️ OUR STACK

• Mostly Python, Bash, C, and whatever else the job calls for

• Check out our Github https://github.com/tropicsquare/ts-tvl

💪 WHO YOU ARE

• Senior software engineer with a track record of designing and maintaining complex systems

• Either you've led a small team and want to keep doing it, or you're a senior IC with the instincts to mentor and steer without formal reports

• Background or genuine interest in hardware, EDA, or embedded development

• Experience or interest in security. We build in a domain where it's not optional

• Comfortable thinking in terms of trade-offs and second-order effects, not just shipping the next feature

• At home in a Unix/Linux environment and in open-source workflows (public reviews, issue trackers, async collaboration)

🤝 WHY JOIN US

• A rare role where software architecture and hardware reality meet

• Direct, visible impact on an open-source project used in real semiconductor development

• Hybrid by default: work from the Prague office, remotely, or mix the two, whichever fits your life. We optimize for autonomy and deep focus

• In-person team meetups in Prague are held a few times a year for planning and architecture work

👋 Interested? We want to hear from you! Just submit your CV, a brief cover letter, and links to your work. After the initial screening, you'll be directly in touch with your future team.