Firmware Engineer, Robotics

Details

About the Team

The team is building general-purpose robotics. In the short term, the focus is on robots that support skilled workers in building future infrastructure. In the long term, the goal is to develop personal robots capable of performing a wide range of tasks. Progress is based on close co-design between robotics hardware and machine learning research.

About the Role

Define and drive the architecture of embedded systems for next-generation hardware products. Own foundational firmware decisions across real-time execution, device bring-up, hardware interfaces, fault handling, safety mechanisms, and production readiness.

The role requires experience building safety-critical or high-consequence systems, with the ability to reason about risk, design for diagnosability and graceful degradation, and establish engineering practices that improve reliability across the team. The engineer will be both a technical leader and a hands-on builder, setting direction, reviewing critical designs, solving difficult problems, and writing production firmware when needed.

The embedded stack uses substantial amounts of Rust.

Responsibilities

• Rapidly bring up new hardware and set the execution pace for the team.
• Lead firmware architecture for embedded systems spanning boot, RTOS and runtime behavior, peripheral control, power management, communications, and field diagnostics.
• Define engineering standards for reliability, fault tolerance, observability, and maintainability across the firmware stack.
• Design and review safety-critical mechanisms, including fault detection, recovery paths, watchdog strategies, redundancy where appropriate, and safe-state behavior.
• Build quick prototypes when speed of learning matters, then harden successful ideas into production-quality systems.
• Partner with hardware, software, and AI research engineers from early prototype through production.
• Build rigorous bring-up, validation, and release processes for embedded platforms.
• Establish testing strategies across unit, hardware-in-the-loop, integration, stress, and failure-injection testing.
• Drive root-cause analysis for subtle hardware, firmware, and system interactions.
• Make tradeoffs across performance, memory, power, schedule, and safety.
• Mentor firmware engineers and help shape a culture of urgency, technical rigor, practical judgment, and high-quality execution.

Requirements

• Extensive experience developing firmware in an iterative environment.
• Experience bringing up new hardware and taking end-to-end ownership of ensuring it works.
• Experience leading architecture and delivery for complex embedded products shipped to real users or operated in demanding production environments.
• Deep fluency in low-level languages, including comfort working close to hardware under real-time constraints.
• Strong understanding of embedded systems fundamentals, including interrupts, scheduling, memory layout, buses, DMA, timing behavior, and failure modes.
• Strong instincts for defensive design, fault containment, validation depth, and post-deployment diagnosability.
• Ability to determine when to build a durable system and when to produce the fastest credible artifact to unlock the next decision.
• Clear communication across disciplines and the ability to turn ambiguity into sound technical direction.
• Commitment to building systems that are fast, capable, and trustworthy.
• Experience using Codex, Claude Code, or similar AI-assisted coding systems to accelerate implementation, prototyping, debugging, and iteration.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Rust in embedded environments.
• Experience with Embassy or other asynchronous embedded Rust frameworks.
• Familiarity with mixed-language firmware architectures, including incrementally introducing Rust into existing C/C++ systems.
• Experience with ARM Cortex-M or Cortex-R platforms, RTOSes, and low-power embedded designs.
• Experience building firmware for sensor-rich, latency-sensitive, or tightly integrated electromechanical products.

Compensation and Benefits

The base salary range is $380,000–$445,000 per year, plus equity. Total compensation may also include performance-related bonuses for eligible employees.

Benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance; employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts; pre-tax accounts; a 401(k) plan with employer match; paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave; paid time off; paid holidays and company closures; mental health and wellness support; employer-paid life and disability coverage; a learning and development stipend; meals and meal delivery credits; relocation support for eligible employees; and additional taxable fringe benefits such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

Workplace

The role is based in San Francisco, California, and requires working in the office four days per week.