Senior Firmware Engineer

About the role

Build the firmware that brings our custom robot electronics to life. We're looking for a Firmware Engineer to own embedded software for the boards that connect our robots' sensors, actuators, and higher-level software-from early hardware bring-up through production deployment and field support.

You'll strengthen our firmware architecture and engineering practices while shipping practical improvements to real machines. Working closely with electrical, motor-controls, robotics software, and manufacturing engineers, you'll help define hardware/software interfaces, diagnose difficult failures, and make our boards easier to test, deploy, and service.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role with substantial technical ownership. You should be comfortable turning an ambiguous problem into a plan, working at the bench, and leaving behind reliable software and tools that others can use.

What you'll do

• Design and maintain embedded C firmware for custom microcontroller boards, including device drivers, board support, communication protocols, and application state machines. Build reusable components across board revisions and robot platforms.
• Partner with electrical engineers on component selection, schematic reviews, debug access, and testability. Bring up new boards and investigate failures using datasheets, measurements, and targeted experiments.
• Implement predictable real-time behavior across interrupts, DMA, peripheral interfaces, and bare-metal or RTOS tasks. Measure timing and resource use, and address concurrency, latency, and memory constraints.
• Define clear contracts between boards and robot software: commands, state reporting, timeouts, fault handling, and version compatibility. Integrate sensors and actuator interfaces with the robotics and motor-controls teams.
• Design robust startup, watchdog, brownout, communication-loss, and recovery behavior. Implement and verify agreed safe states with hardware and system owners, and expose diagnostics that make intermittent failures actionable.
• Own firmware delivery and serviceability: bootloaders, validated updates and recovery paths, board identification, versioned configuration and calibration, and compatibility checks that help prevent incorrect deployment.
• Build automated unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop tests, including fault injection and long-duration testing. Develop tools for production bring-up, calibration, manufacturing tests, and diagnostics, and integrate them into shared CI and release workflows.
• Follow production issues through root cause and prevention. Document design decisions, interfaces, and troubleshooting procedures; participate in reviews and help teammates build confidence working with embedded systems.

What we are looking for

• A track record of shipping microcontroller firmware on custom hardware and supporting it beyond the prototype stage. You can explain your own architecture decisions, debugging work, and lessons from deployed products.
• Strong C or C++ skills for resource-constrained systems, with a solid understanding of memory, interrupts, concurrency, peripheral registers, and real-time execution. Practical bare-metal and RTOS experience.
• Hands-on board bring-up and debugging skills. You can read schematics and datasheets, use oscilloscopes and logic analyzers, and debug firmware through SWD/JTAG or equivalent tools.
• Experience implementing and troubleshooting embedded interfaces such as CAN, SPI, I2C, and UART, with the ability to reason about timing, corrupted or missing data, and recovery.
• A disciplined approach to reliability: maintainable designs, meaningful automated tests, reproducible builds, version control, code review, and useful diagnostics. Python or comparable scripting skills for test and development tools.
• Independent judgment and collaborative ownership. You prioritize effectively, surface risks early, distinguish evidence from assumptions, and communicate clearly across software and hardware teams.

Helpful, but not required

• CAN-FD, CANopen/CiA 402, or comparable distributed device protocols; integration with Linux-based robot software via Ethernet.
• Bootloaders, secure firmware update mechanisms, persistent configuration, calibration, and production programming or test fixtures.
• Motor-driver integration, encoders, PWM/ADC synchronization, or embedded implementation of control loops.
• Robotics, industrial automation, appliances, or other electromechanical products with demanding uptime and service needs; hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure or Bazel-based embedded builds.

Benefits Summary (USA Full-Time Exempt Employees)

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (multiple plans, incl. HSA options).
• Company-paid life and disability insurance (short- and long-term).
• Voluntary insurance: accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity.
• Optional supplemental life insurance for self, spouse, and children.
• Pet insurance discount.
• 401(k).
• Health Savings Account (HSA)
• Flexible Spending Accounts (Healthcare, Dependent Care, Commuter)
• Time Off policies:
• Discretionary vacation days
• 8 paid holidays per year
• Paid sick time
• Paid Bereavement leave
• Paid Parental Leave

• Benefits are subject to change at the company's discretion.
• Atoms accepts applications on an ongoing basis.

Ready to join us as we serve those who serve others?

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