Principal Embedded Firmware Engineer

Hire Ventures

$135K — $160K *
Technical Services
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Strong background in embedded systems and performance-sensitive software
  • Hands-on experience with microcontroller firmware
  • Familiarity with RTOS-based systems and peripheral drivers
  • Proficient in hardware debugging from datasheets and transfer protocols
  • Experience in post-deployment support of embedded products
  • Knowledge of OTA firmware safety and recovery protocols
  • Strong ability to manage and enhance a large codebase without halting delivery
  • Excellent communication skills across technical teams

Responsibilities

  • Own the CR-One firmware platform's build, flash, and release processes
  • Safely manage firmware improvements in customer environments
  • Lead the OTA release lifecycle, ensuring stability and rollback capabilities
  • Diagnose firmware and hardware issues using logs and telemetry data
  • Enhance build reproducibility and documentation for operational clarity
  • Maintain compatibility across various firmware versions and configurations
  • Support factory and production processes, including hardware testing and analysis
  • Collaborate with backend teams for device telemetry and support
  • Contribute to the future architectural design of CR-One firmware

Benefits

  • Collaborative work environment with diverse engineering teams
  • Opportunities to work with cutting-edge technologies like Rust and NFC
  • Involvement in long-term product development and architecture
  • Impactful role in maintaining and improving production systems
  • Exposure to various technical disciplines and tools involved in embedded systems
Full Job Description
Principal Embedded Firmware Engineer - Rust and Connected Devices

The role

We are looking for a Principal Embedded Firmware Engineer to own the CR-One firmware platform and the tools used to build, provision, release, update, and support it.

You will take ownership of an in-production system, develop a deep understanding of its architecture, keep the deployed fleet healthy, and extend it for future products and use cases. You will work closely with hardware, backend, product, manufacturing, technical services, and external engineering partners.

What you will work on
  • Embedded Rust device architecture
  • NFC RFID
  • Cellular, BLE, USB, and GNSS
  • Security and device lifecycle
  • Protocols and fleet tooling

Responsibilities
  • Take technical ownership of the CR-One firmware platform and its build, flash, provisioning, release, and update pipelines.
  • Safely extend and improve firmware running on devices in customer and partner environments.
  • Own the OTA release lifecycle, including signing, staged deployment, rollback, health validation, and incident response.
  • Diagnose firmware and hardware problems using logs, telemetry, serial traces, and controlled reproduction.
  • Improve reproducible builds, release documentation, and operational visibility.
  • Maintain backward compatibility across firmware versions, device configurations, and shared wire protocols.
  • Support factory programming, provisioning, production testing, hardware revisions, and manufacturing failure analysis.
  • Partner with backend and dashboard engineers on device configuration, telemetry, fleet health, and remote support.
  • Help define the firmware architecture for future CR-One generations.
  • Improve the system incrementally while continuing to deliver customer and partner capabilities.

Required qualifications
  • Strong professional in embedded systems, infrastructure, performance-sensitive, or similarly demanding software.
  • Substantial hands-on microcontroller firmware experience.
  • Experience with RTOS-based systems, interrupts, peripheral drivers, persistent state, and resource-constrained devices.
  • Ability to bring up and debug hardware directly from datasheets, register maps, and protocol specifications.
  • Experience supporting embedded product through production and after deployment.
  • Understanding of firmware release safety, OTA updates, device recovery, and field-failure investigation.
  • Strong bench-debugging skills.
  • Experience taking ownership of a large, evolving codebase and improving it without stopping delivery.
  • Sound engineering judgment and the ability to communicate clearly across firmware, hardware, backend, product, and operations teams.

Preferred experience

Experience in some of the following areas is valuable, but we do not expect candidates to have worked with every technology:
  • Embedded Rust or Rust on ESP-IDF.
  • ESP32, ESP-IDF, FreeRTOS, or comparable embedded platforms.
  • LTE-M, NB-IoT, Quectel, u-blox, or other cellular modem integrations.
  • MQTT, TLS, mutual TLS, PKI, X.509, and certificate enrollment.
  • NFC & RFID protocols, including ISO 14443, ISO 15693, MIFARE, DESFire, or NFC-V.
  • USB device stacks, HID, CDC, TinyUSB, BLE, and GNSS.
  • Secure boot, flash encryption, hardware provisioning, and protected key storage.
  • Differential or delta OTA systems.
  • Binary and JSON serialization formats.
  • Python, Bash, firmware release tooling, cross-compilation, and build automation.
  • MQTT-broker, or fleet-management experience.

* This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship *

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