[hatsubai]

I am an embedded OS (both Linux and vxWorks) engineer for a defense contractor. Day to day work is actually more about maintaining the OS, making sure applications get loaded successfully, and continuously keeping it both secure and fast (emphasis on secure). The initial board bring up and driver development is usually at the beginning of the project, and you usually only have to do small tweaks as the project matures. There'll be spinoffs based on successful implementations, but again, it's not too terrible. Debugging can be very stressful, but since I'm in defense, the schedule itself is usually quite long, so I have always had more than enough time to fix any issues.

It's a solid career choice, especially if you want to branch out into automotive where they are hitting this field hard. The skills you learn are also applicable to pretty much anywhere where you use Linux, so the transferable skill set overlaps a good deal.

There's a really good book I recommend that describes basically anything and everything you need to know called "Mastering Embedded Linux Programming" by Chris Simmonds. It'll teach you pretty much everything you need to know to get up and running in the embedded Linux world. It's also a ton of fun if you've never messed with something like a BeagleBone.

That said, I'm looking to get out of the defense industry and getting back into app development. Part of it is because I want to work with newer, more exciting technology. I'm looking towards possibly going back to mobile development, even. Unsure at the moment... Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the stability of the market. I honestly feel it's way more stable than most people seem to give it credit for, especially the embedded Linux side of things.