Senior Firmware Engineer

About the role

Bring more to life.

Are you ready to accelerate your potential and make a real difference within life sciences, diagnostics and biotechnology?

At Molecular Devices, one of Danaher’s 15+ operating companies, our work saves lives—and we’re all united by a shared commitment to innovate for tangible impact.

You’ll thrive in a culture of belonging where you and your unique viewpoint matter. And by harnessing Danaher’s system of continuous improvement, you help turn ideas into impact – innovating at the speed of life.

Join Molecular Devices and help drive scientific discovery for life science customers in academia, biotech, pharma, and government. Our automated and AI-enabled technology empowers researchers to tackle complex questions and gain deep insights, accelerating the development of safer, more effective therapeutics. As part of our team—rooted in collaboration, authenticity, and innovation—you’ll ultimately contribute to groundbreaking science that enhances lives globally and shapes a healthier future for all.

Learn about the Danaher Business System which makes everything possible.

The Senior Firmware Engineer is responsible for designing, developing, verifying, and maintaining embedded firmware for advanced scientific imaging and automation instruments. The role supports shared and complementary embedded technologies across the imaging instrument platforms, including real-time control, precision motion, imaging hardware, communications, firmware updates, environmental control, diagnostics, and multi-board integration.

This position reports to the Software Engineering Manager and is part of the Engineering team located in San Jose, California. This is an on-site role supporting hands-on instrument development and integration.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to

• Design and deliver production embedded firmware in C and modern C++ for STM32-based controllers, creating maintainable architectures for multi-board scientific instruments and board-specific applications.
• Lead hardware bring-up, subsystem integration, and performance optimization across motion, imaging, illumination, sensing, temperature control, and other instrument functions in partnership with electrical, mechanical, systems, test, application software, and manufacturing teams.
• Develop and troubleshoot real-time FreeRTOS and CMSIS-RTOS applications, including task scheduling, synchronization, queues, notifications, timers, interrupts, DMA, memory usage, and fault recovery.
• Implement reliable device communication and update capabilities, including peripheral drivers, framed host-device protocols, CRC-protected messaging, Ethernet/TCP services, embedded networking, bootloaders, flash programming, image verification, and persistent configuration.
• Strengthen product quality and technical execution by building unit, integration, hardware-assisted, and hardware-in-the-loop tests; maintaining build and continuous-integration workflows; leading design and code reviews; documenting interfaces and decisions; mentoring engineers; and driving root-cause analysis of regressions and field issues.

The essential requirements of the job include

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional embedded firmware development experience, including ownership of production systems through development, integration, release, and maintenance.
• Expert proficiency in embedded C and strong proficiency in modern C++ for resource-constrained microcontrollers, with practical experience on STM32 or comparable Arm Cortex-M platforms.
• Hands-on experience developing RTOS-based and non-RTOS embedded systems, including interrupts, DMA, timers, concurrency, memory constraints, and fault handling. Experience designing and maintaining hardware-facing firmware using UART, I2C, SPI, PWM, ADC/DAC, GPIO, Ethernet/TCP, or comparable interfaces. Ability to read schematics and datasheets and diagnose hardware–firmware interactions using oscilloscopes, digital multimeters, logic analyzers, and other standard bench tools.
• Demonstrated experience with code reviews, automated testing, technical documentation, and disciplined root-cause analysis for complex embedded products.

Travel, Motor Vehicle Record & Physical/Environment Requirements

• Willing and able to travel up to 10%.
• Able to lift up to 50 pounds.

It would be a plus if you also possess previous experience in

• Experience developing scientific instruments, microscopy systems, laboratory automation, imaging systems, or other complex electromechanical products.
• Experience integrating device drivers with application software.

Additional information

Molecular Devices, a Danaher operating company, offers a broad array of comprehensive, competitive benefit programs that add value to our lives. Whether it’s a health care program or paid time off, our programs contribute to life beyond the job. Check out our benefits at Danaher Benefits Info.

Pay and benefits

The annual salary range for this role is $120,000 to $160,000. This is the range that we in good faith believe is the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting. This range may be modified in the future.

This job is also eligible for bonus/incentive pay.

We offer comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole discretion, consistent with the law.

Join our winning team today. Together, we’ll accelerate the real-life impact of tomorrow’s science and technology. We partner with customers across the globe to help them solve their most complex challenges, architecting solutions that bring the power of science to life.

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