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
