Engineer III, Smart Switch Software Development

About the role

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. We are looking for an Engineer III to join our Smart Switch firmware team in Chennai. You will develop and maintain embedded Linux firmware for NETGEAR's smart switch product families - working across user-space applications, cloud integration agents, configuration management, and web-based management interfaces. This role focuses on the application and integration layers of the firmware stack: system daemons, CLI, cloud agent, web UI backend, and the configuration subsystem that ties everything together. You will work on production firmware that ships to customers worldwide and collaborate daily with the various engineering teams. We value engineers who actively use AI coding agents in their daily work - not just as autocomplete, but as collaborative tools for code generation, debugging, and accelerating feature delivery. Familiarity with agentic engineering practices is a strong plus. This is an excellent role for a mid-career embedded or systems engineer who wants to deepen their expertise in networking firmware while taking ownership of meaningful features end-to-end.

What you'll do

• Application Development: Develop and maintain user-space daemons and services (process management, event handling, polling, monitoring, file synchronization) that form the runtime environment of the switch firmware.
• Cloud Integration: Work on the Insight cloud agent subsystem - CloudAgent, ConfigAgent, DiscoveryAgent - including REST API handlers, device-to-cloud communication, SSL/TLS integration, and the Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) that bridges cloud commands to hardware operations.
• CLI & Configuration: Enhance and maintain the Cisco IOS-style CLI framework and the configuration database engine that manages startup-config and running-config. Implement new CLI commands for features and ensure configuration persistence and consistency.
• Web UI: Develop and maintain the web-based management interface (JavaScript, HTML/CSS) for switch configuration and monitoring. Work on both the legacy jQuery-based UI and the newer Bootstrap-based UI.
• SNMP: Implement and maintain SNMP MIB support (v1/v2c/v3) for network management system integration.
• Testing & Debugging: Write test cases, perform firmware validation on physical switch hardware, and debug issues using serial console, SSH debug shell, packet captures, and log analysis. Contribute to building the team's test automation capabilities.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Work with the various engineering teams across time zones. Participate in code reviews, sprint planning, and technical discussions. Document your work clearly for the distributed team.
• AI-Augmented Development: Use AI coding agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) as part of your daily workflow to accelerate coding, debugging, and documentation tasks. Be open to evolving your development practices as AI tooling advances.

Requirements

• B.Tech/B.E. or M.Tech/M.E. in Computer Science, Electronics, or a related field.
• 4-7 years of professional experience in embedded or systems software development.
• Proficiency in C programming on Linux (user-space applications, shared libraries, IPC mechanisms - sockets, shared memory, signals).
• Working knowledge of networking fundamentals - TCP/IP, VLANs, Ethernet, ARP, DHCP; ability to use Wireshark or tcpdump for packet-level debugging.
• Experience with at least one of: REST API development in C, embedded HTTP servers, or SSL/TLS integration.
• Familiarity with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS for web-based interfaces (does not need to be primary skill).
• Experience with GNU Make build systems and cross-compilation for embedded targets (ARM or MIPS).
• Comfortable working with Git (branching, merging, submodules) in a multi-developer environment.
• Active use of AI coding assistants or AI agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Cline) in daily development work to improve productivity.

Nice to have

• Experience with embedded Linux networking products (switches, routers, access points, or gateways).
• Familiarity with SNMP (net-snmp, MIB development) or CLI framework development.
• Experience with any L2 networking protocol implementation (STP, LLDP, IGMP, LACP).
• Hands-on experience with cloud device management systems and OTA update mechanisms.

Practical notes

This role is based in Bengaluru, India on a full-time engagement. We do not list compensation details on this public page. The position involves collaboration across time zones with periodic overlap hours required for planning and reviews. Applicants must be eligible to work in India without visa sponsorship for this role. The successful candidate will contribute directly to firmware that reaches global customers, working with modern toolchains and AI-assisted workflows in a fast-paced engineering environment.