About the roleDo you want to help change the world? This position sits within a team that develops fully functional prototypes from scratch to demonstrate new, advanced operation and control for autonomous grid connection, management, and regulation.
As a Staff Embedded Firmware Engineer focused on inverter controls, you will design and develop the real-time control firmware at the heart of our microinverter systems - implementing closed-loop control, grid-tied regulation, and protection logic, and working closely with hardware engineers to bring prototype designs to life from concept through validation. You will also mentor junior engineers and contribute to the team's technical direction.
What you will do- Define and develop new control concepts for the microinverter system and its sub-systems.
- Design and implement real-time inverter control firmware, including closed-loop current/voltage control and grid-tied regulation.
- Design firmware for functional safety and compliance with UL1741, IEEE 1547, and IEC 62109 standards.
- Develop and simulate control algorithms for autonomous microgrid power flow management.
- Develop unit and system test software.
- Validate control algorithms using system simulation tools.
- Work with hardware engineers to test and troubleshoot prototype designs.
- Perform firmware testing prior to design releases to the QA team.
- Organize thorough PR reviews, documentation rigor, and well-managed release branches.
- Accelerate firmware development and test flow utilizing AI tools.
- Mentor junior engineers and contribute to the team's technical direction.
Who you are and What you bring- BS/MS in Electrical Engineering and/or Power Electronics/Power Systems.
- 8+ years of experience in embedded software or firmware design and development, preferably in electrical/control systems and/or power electronics products.
- Strong experience developing firmware for complex inverter controls, including closed-loop control and grid-tied regulation.
- Expertise in C, C++, and Assembly for real-time applications.
- In-depth experience coding in FreeRTOS and bare-metal environments.
- Ability to understand and implement digital signal processing (DSP) concepts in a 32-bit or larger microprocessor environment.
- Familiarity with evaluating CPU versus hardware processing requirements and trade-offs for cost-effective designs.
- Ability to troubleshoot firmware-related issues within complex systems, including hands-on testing in the lab.
- Ability to test code and hardware both with and without external test equipment such as oscilloscopes, power meters, and similar instruments.
- Ability to carry design tasks from concept to implementation.
- Ability to document engineering requirements, document solutions, and test new firmware designs.
What will make you stand out- Familiarity with software development processes (e.g., Agile, structured, object-oriented).
- Familiarity with development tools such as GCC, GDB, Eclipse, and GNU Make.
- Familiarity with source code management tools such as Git and Mercurial.
- Experience with Zephyr RTOS.
- Familiarity with firmware build pipeline tools such as Bitbucket, Docker, GitHub, and JFrog; experience with CI/CD release processes is a plus.
Work LocationThis role requires being on-site at our Austin, Texas office 5 days per week.
The base pay range for this position is $100,000 to $151,000 per year. This salary range may be modified in the future. The successful candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, education or training, work location, and market conditions. This position is also eligible for bonus, equity, and benefits.
