A Software Engineer at 1X Technologies AS works at the absolute frontier of physical artificial intelligence. The mission here is not just to build software, but to create the digital mind, nervous system, and infrastructure that power next-generation humanoid robots like Eve and Neo. Engineers in this role build the foundational layers that enable safe, intelligent, and natural human-robot interaction in real-world environments.

Because 1X Technologies AS integrates hardware, low-level control, simulation, and cloud infrastructure, your work as a software engineer directly impacts how robots perceive, navigate, and manipulate their surroundings. Whether you are optimizing a real-time operating system, building high-fidelity physics simulations, designing intuitive teleoperation interfaces, or scaling the cloud infrastructure that manages fleets of robots, your contributions are critical to deploying capable androids into homes and workplaces worldwide.

This is a highly interdisciplinary environment where software engineering meets mechanical design, electrical engineering, and advanced machine learning. Candidates who thrive here are those who possess a deep curiosity for physical systems, a strong engineering foundation, and the ability to collaborate across traditional engineering boundaries to solve highly complex, open-ended problems.

The questions you will face during the 1X Technologies AS hiring process are designed to test your core engineering fundamentals, your familiarity with hardware-software integration, and your ability to solve complex systems challenges. Because the software team works closely with physical hardware, expect a mix of classic computer science questions, low-level systems design, and practical engineering scenarios.

Systems & Low-Level Programming

These questions evaluate your understanding of operating systems, memory management, and low-latency code execution, which are critical for real-time robot control.

• How do you manage memory allocation in a real-time system to avoid latency spikes?
• Explain the difference between process-level and thread-level concurrency in a Linux environment.

Preparing for an interview at 1X Technologies AS requires a balanced approach that combines deep technical preparation with a strong understanding of physical systems. You should approach your preparation with the mindset of a systems thinker who appreciates both elegant code and physical constraints.

Technical and Systems Depth – You must demonstrate a strong grasp of computer science fundamentals, low-level systems, or your specific domain (such as cloud, simulation, or OS). Be ready to explain the "why" behind your architectural decisions, focusing on performance, latency, and reliability.

Hardware-Software Integration – Even if you are applying for a pure software role, you must show an appreciation for the physical realities of robotics. Understanding how software interacts with microcontrollers, sensors, actuators, and communication buses will set you apart.

Problem-Solving Under Ambiguity – Humanoid robotics is an unsolved field. Interviewers want to see how you structure your thoughts when faced with open-ended, novel challenges where there is no standard textbook solution.

Collaborative Grit – Building robots is a team sport. You need to demonstrate that you can work seamlessly with mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and ML researchers, showing humility, curiosity, and a shared passion for the mission.

The interview process at 1X Technologies AS is designed to evaluate both your technical capabilities and your alignment with the company's fast-paced, collaborative culture. While the process is rigorous, candidates frequently report that the team is supportive, welcoming, and genuinely interested in giving you the opportunity to showcase your strengths.

The initial stages typically begin with a recruiter screen or a specialized screening format depending on your location. For some roles, particularly in European offices, the initial screen may involve an HR representative reading structured technical questions and recording your responses for the engineering team to review asynchronously. In US locations, the process often starts with a friendly 30-minute introductory call with a recruiter, followed by a technical screening call with the hiring manager.

Following a successful screening phase, candidates are invited to a comprehensive technical panel or an on-site interview. The on-site experience typically consists of multiple technical deep dives with different engineers, covering specialized topics relevant to your track, such as low-level systems, simulation, or hardware diagnostics. The team often facilitates travel for on-site interviews, providing an excellent opportunity to see the office, meet the team in person, and experience the company's engineering culture firsthand.

The visual timeline above outlines the standard progression from your initial application to the final offer stage. Candidates should use this timeline to pace their preparation, ensuring they are fully prepared for the deep technical rounds that occur during the on-site panel. While the exact sequence can vary slightly by team and location, the transition from high-level screening to intensive technical evaluation remains consistent.

To succeed at 1X Technologies AS, you must perform strongly across several core evaluation areas. The interviewers will assess your skills through practical scenarios and technical discussions tailored to your engineering track.

Systems & Low-Level Programming

This area evaluates your ability to write efficient, low-latency code that can run reliably on physical hardware. Humanoid robots require high-frequency control loops, meaning memory leaks, CPU bottlenecks, or inefficient algorithms can have physical consequences.

Be ready to go over:

• Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) – Understanding task prioritization, preemptive scheduling, and interrupt handling.
• Memory Management – Techniques for avoiding dynamic allocation in critical execution paths to prevent latency spikes.
• Concurrency & IPC – Utilizing multi-threading, mutexes, lock-free data structures, and inter-process communication mechanisms like shared memory or ROS2.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Linux kernel customization, writing custom device drivers, and optimizing network protocols for high-bandwidth sensor streams.

Example scenarios:

• Designing a low-latency data pipeline to stream joint encoder data to a high-level control loop.
• Debugging a priority inversion issue where a low-priority logging task blocks a high-priority motor control task.

Simulation & Teleoperation

For engineers working on simulation and teleoperation, the focus is on creating accurate digital environments and seamless human-in-the-loop interfaces. This requires a strong mathematical foundation and an understanding of physics engine mechanics.

Be ready to go over:

• Physics Engines – How engines like MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, or Bullet handle rigid body dynamics, collisions, and contact forces.
• 3D Math & Kinematics – Deep understanding of quaternions, transformation matrices, forward/inverse kinematics, and spatial algebra.
• Latency Mitigation – Techniques for prediction, interpolation, and smoothing to make teleoperation feel natural despite network delays.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Integrating virtual reality (VR) hardware with real-time robot control loops and simulating soft-body contacts or complex materials.

Example scenarios:

• Optimizing a simulation pipeline to run faster than real-time for reinforcement learning training.
• Designing a filtering algorithm to smooth out noisy inputs from a VR controller before sending them to the robot's actuators.

Hardware Diagnostics & Prototyping

For systems, electrical, and prototyping engineers, the interview will focus on your ability to bring physical prototypes to life and diagnose issues when hardware and software collide.

Be ready to go over:

• Diagnostic Tooling – Using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and multimeters to debug physical hardware.
• Communication Protocols – Debugging and optimizing serial communication buses such as CAN, EtherCAT, I2C, and SPI.
• CAD & Mechanical Integration – Interpreting mechanical drawings, understanding physical tolerances, and writing software that respects material limits.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Designing automated hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing rigs and analyzing structural stress data from strain gauges.

Example scenarios:

• Walking through your process for isolating a intermittent sensor failure on a robot's hand assembly.
• Writing a script to parse raw CAN bus traffic to identify a misbehaving actuator node.

As a Software Engineer at 1X Technologies AS, your day-to-day responsibilities will vary depending on your specific team, but will generally revolve around the following core activities:

• Developing Robot Software: Writing clean, robust, and highly optimized code in C++ or Python to run on humanoid robots, edge devices, or cloud platforms.
• Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration: Working closely with mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and machine learning researchers to define hardware-software interfaces, debug complex system integration issues, and bring new robotic capabilities to life.
• Building Infrastructure & Tools: Designing and maintaining the simulation environments, teleoperation interfaces, data pipelines, and diagnostic tools that enable rapid development and testing of physical AI.
• Testing & Validation: Conducting rigorous testing of your software in simulation and on physical hardware to ensure safety, reliability, and performance in real-world environments.
• Optimizing System Performance: Profiling and optimizing software to meet strict real-time constraints, minimize latency, and maximize compute efficiency on resource-constrained hardware.