Lead Firmware Engineer

About the Role

You will architect and own the firmware for our wearable’s distributed-compute platform: a media and connectivity MCU running camera capture, audio runtime, Wi-Fi streaming, and onboard storage; a sensor-acquisition MCU running the biopotential signal chain and BLE streaming; and an always-on MCU enforcing power management, privacy, and thermal control.

The firmware is the connective tissue of our wearable - every subsystem either lives inside it or talks to it. You will report to the Head of Hardware, with regular exposure to Sabi’s CEO and CTO, and partner closely with the EE, audio, camera, AI/ML, and reliability leads.

Each subsystem lead provides their algorithms and interface specs; you provide the runtime, drivers, and orchestration that make the whole platform work. You will also work extensively with external engineering teams at our contract manufacturers - the work is outsourced; the accountability is yours.

What You’ll Do

• Architect firmware across the distributed-compute platform: RTOS choice, task structure, inter-processor protocols, OTA, and time sync.
• Own the runtime that hosts every subsystem, audio DSP, camera capture pipeline, biopotential acquisition, through specified interfaces with each subsystem lead.
• Own the media and connectivity MCU pipeline, camera capture, audio runtime, wake-word, Wi-Fi streaming, and onboard logging, concurrently within strict CPU and memory budgets.
• Drive low-power firmware on the always-on MCU: state machines for standby, assist, and continuous modes; hardware-enforced privacy; thermal throttling.
• Build the multi-MCU time-sync layer that lets us correlate EEG, audio, and camera data downstream.
• Establish the firmware engineering practices that scale: build and release pipelines, on-device telemetry, automated test, OTA with safe rollback, field debug tooling.
• Partner with the EE lead on hardware bring-up and boot path; with the reliability lead on field telemetry, error handling, and diagnostic surfaces.
• Bring up ASICs in collaboration with the EE and silicon teams
• Ship the product by the end of year, and build and lead the firmware team as we scale to production.

Must-Haves

• 10+ years of embedded firmware engineering, with at least one shipped consumer product where you owned firmware architecture end-to-end.
• Deep expertise across embedded RTOSes and bare-metal ARM Cortex-M, with familiarity across at least two ecosystems (e.g., Zephyr, FreeRTOS, ESP-IDF, ThreadX, NuttX).
• Hands-on experience hosting real-time DSP runtimes alongside wireless connectivity on resource-constrained MCUs - integrating algorithms owned by other teams.
• Strong background in multi-radio coexistence (Wi-Fi + BLE), low-power state-machine design, and OTA with safe rollback.
• Comfortable in the lab with JTAG/SWD, logic analyzers, and protocol sniffers - able to drive bring-up from first power-on through end-to-end functional demos.

Nice-to-Haves

• Deploying neural network inference to low-power MCUs or dedicated AI accelerators - model conversion, quantization, runtime integration.
• Familiarity with on-device inference frameworks and edge AI runtimes.
• Custom AI accelerator silicon, neuromorphic compute, or in-memory-compute platforms.
• On-device wake-word or always-on voice activation engines.
• Integrating biopotential acquisition over standard sensor buses.

Additional information

If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every qualification, please apply. As we build, we’re hiring for complementary strengths to form a high-impact team.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive base salary
• Meaningful equity package
• 401(k) with company matching
• Health insurance
• Flexible PTO

Our Hiring Timeline

• Evaluation completed within 14 days of first interview
• Offer letter dispatched same day as go decision, valid for 10 days
• Start date within 4 weeks of offer acceptance
• All candidate queries responded to within 3 hours during business hours