Lead Firmware Engineer — Embedded Systems & IoT

We are a fast-growing consumer technology company building innovative connected products that combine embedded systems, wireless communication, cloud connectivity, and mobile applications into a seamless user experience.

Our products operate in real-world consumer environments and require highly reliable firmware, secure OTA update systems, strong wireless performance, and long-term maintainability.

We are looking for a highly capable Lead Firmware Engineer to take ownership of our firmware development efforts as we transition away from outsourced firmware development and build an internal engineering team.

This is a high-impact role for someone who wants true ownership over firmware architecture, product reliability, and the long-term technical direction of connected products shipping at scale.

Position Summary

The Lead Firmware Engineer will own the firmware stack across our connected product ecosystem, including embedded device firmware, wireless communication systems, OTA infrastructure, bootloaders, firmware security, and long-term firmware architecture.

You will work closely with product, cloud/backend, mobile app, QA, and leadership teams to deliver robust, secure, production-ready firmware systems.

This role requires someone who is both deeply technical and highly practical — capable of architecting systems while also solving difficult real-world firmware issues independently.

You will also help establish engineering standards, firmware workflows, testing processes, release management practices, and long-term firmware strategy.

ResponsibilitiesFirmware Architecture & Development

Lead development of embedded firmware for connected IoT products
Architect scalable and maintainable firmware systems
Design modular firmware frameworks for future product expansion
Develop and maintain RTOS-based firmware systems
Optimize firmware for reliability, memory usage, battery life, and performance
Implement secure bootloaders and encrypted OTA firmware update systems
Manage firmware versioning, rollback systems, and NVM migration strategies
Improve firmware maintainability, diagnostics, logging, and recovery systems
Build fault-tolerant firmware systems designed for real-world consumer environments

Connectivity & Communication

Develop and maintain wireless communication systems including:
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth/BLE
UWB
LoRa/LoRaWAN
Improve connectivity reliability across difficult real-world networking environments
Diagnose and resolve firmware-level communication issues
Optimize firmware behavior across mobile apps, cloud systems, and connected devices

Product Reliability & Stability

Diagnose complex firmware issues and intermittent failures
Lead root-cause analysis for field-reported problems
Improve OTA update success rates and firmware recovery systems
Develop watchdog, fail-safe, telemetry, and recovery strategies
Improve system stability, uptime, and resilience
Build firmware systems designed for long-term supportability and scalability

Security

Implement firmware security best practices
Secure firmware signing and encrypted firmware delivery systems
Manage secure provisioning and device authentication
Help define long-term firmware security strategy and update integrity processes

Leadership

Take ownership of firmware engineering roadmap and technical direction
Manage outsourced firmware vendors during transition period
Establish firmware development standards and documentation practices
Help build future internal firmware engineering team
Participate in hiring and technical evaluations
Collaborate cross-functionally with cloud, mobile, QA, and product teams

Required Qualifications

7+ years of hands-on embedded firmware development experience
Expert-level C/C++ embedded development skills
Strong RTOS experience (FreeRTOS or similar)
Extensive experience developing and shipping production embedded/IoT products
Strong debugging capability for embedded systems and firmware behavior
Experience designing and maintaining OTA firmware update systems
Strong understanding of firmware security, encrypted firmware delivery, secure boot, and provisioning
Deep experience with wireless communication stacks and protocols including:
BLE
Wi-Fi
UART
UWB
SPI
I2C
Experience optimizing firmware for reliability, performance, memory usage, and battery life
Strong understanding of firmware architecture, state machines, concurrency, task scheduling, and fault recovery
Experience managing firmware versioning, rollback systems, and NVM migration strategies
Strong Git-based development workflow experience
Excellent technical communication and documentation skills

Most Importantly — Proven Ownership

We are specifically looking for engineers who have personally carried major firmware ownership on shipped products.

This is not a role for someone who:

Worked on a very large engineering team contributing only a narrow subsystem
Primarily coordinated outsourced developers
Mainly maintained legacy firmware without significant architecture responsibility
Only worked on internal tooling, proof-of-concepts, or unreleased products

We are looking for someone who can clearly demonstrate that they:

Personally architected substantial portions of firmware systems
Led firmware development from concept through production release
Solved difficult firmware stability and reliability issues
Owned major technical decisions and firmware architecture
Built systems that are currently operating in real-world production environments
Can clearly articulate their direct contributions versus broader team contributions

Candidates should be prepared to discuss:

Specific shipped products they personally helped build
Their exact level of ownership and responsibility
Firmware architecture decisions they made
Complex bugs or stability issues they solved
OTA/update systems they implemented
Security approaches they designed
Reliability improvements they introduced
How they handled scaling, maintainability, and firmware lifecycle management

Preferred Evidence of Capability

Strong preference will be given to candidates who can provide:

Examples of commercial products currently on the market
Portfolio material, technical writeups, GitHub contributions, patents, or demonstrable project history
Clear evidence of end-to-end firmware ownership
Startup or small-team experience where they were a primary technical driver
Experience building and maintaining firmware systems with high accountability and limited oversight

We value engineers who have truly owned firmware systems and delivered real products — not candidates whose experience was limited to a small piece of a much larger engineering organization.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with UWB systems
Experience with LoRa/LoRaWAN
Experience with Nordic, ESP32, STM32, or Silicon Labs platforms
Experience with Linux-based embedded systems
Experience with bootloader development
Experience with consumer electronics products
Experience scaling products from prototype to mass production
Experience with AWS IoT or cloud-connected device ecosystems
Experience with mobile app/device integration
Experience working in fast-moving startup environments

What We’re Looking For

We are looking for someone who:

Takes ownership and solves problems proactively
Can balance speed with long-term architecture quality
Enjoys building products, not just writing code
Thinks deeply about reliability, usability, and scalability
Is comfortable operating independently with significant technical responsibility
Wants to help build and lead a world-class firmware organization

Compensation & Benefits

Competitive salary
Equity opportunity
High-growth startup environment
Significant technical ownership and influence
Opportunity to directly shape next-generation connected products
Health benefits and PTO
Flexible, fast-moving engineering culture

Location

Phoenix, AZ

To Apply

Please send:

Resume
LinkedIn profile
Examples of shipped products or relevant embedded systems projects
Brief description of your role in those projects
Any GitHub, portfolio, patents, or technical project links (optional)

We are especially interested in engineers who have successfully shipped real-world connected products and personally carried significant firmware ownership from development through production deployment.

Pay: $160,000.00 - $200,000.00 per year

Benefits:

Dental insurance
Health insurance
Paid time off
Relocation assistance
Stock options

Work Location: In person

Pawport

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