Senior Firmware Engineer

JobSpace; Auckland; On-site; NZD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Delicious snacks and drinks

Southern Cross Health Insurance

6 months parental leave

4 weeks secondary caregiver leave

$1000 self-development budget

Wellness leave

Unlimited paid annual leave

Employee stock ownership plan

Job summary

Halter in New Zealand is seeking an experienced embedded firmware engineer to design and deliver firmware for our collar devices running FreeRTOS. You will work close to hardware, handling power, memory, and reliability constraints while building scalable communication systems.

You'll own firmware end-to-end, debug challenging field issues, and collaborate with hardware engineers to ensure the platform's reliability. A maths/physics background and passion for farming tech are valued.

Qualifications

• Solid embedded firmware experience for resource-constrained devices.
• Strong C/C++ fundamentals and low-level hardware work.
• Experience with real-time systems and timing constraints.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement embedded firmware for collars running FreeRTOS.
• Develop robust communication systems (LoRa, BLE, cellular) and protocols.
• Tune hardware-near algorithms for timing and synchronization.
• Own firmware end-to-end from design to production support.
• Debug field-only issues using telemetry and logs.
• Collaborate with hardware engineers on interfaces.

Skills

Firmware design

C/C++ proficiency

Real-time systems

Hardware interaction

Ownership mindset

Education

Maths/Physics background

Tools

FreeRTOS

LoRa

BLE

Cellular

protobuf

Job description

Jora New Zealand will close on 9th September 2026. Thank you for being with us, we are cheering you on as you continue your career journey.

At Halter, we're on a mission to enable farmers and graziers to run the most productive and sustainable operations. Our customers are using Halter to break free from the time-intensive constraints of conventional practices. Imagine watching 500 cattle stand up and walk calmly towards their next break? No quad bikes, no dogs, no fences. Just a group of cattle walking at their own pace. People say it looks like magic. Our customers are revolutionizing grazing with Halter. It's changing lives and transforming an industry. People join Halter to do meaningful work. By joining us you'll be solving challenging problems within a talented team and a culture built for high performance. Our team out-think, out-work and out-care. We're committed to delivering real change in the world - this isn't easy, and in truth, we love that it's hard.

We're backed to deliver on a mission that matters by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, BOND, DCVC, Blackbird, Promus Ventures, Rocket Lab's Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures.

What You'll Be Doing

Design and implement robust embedded C/C++ firmware for our collars, running on FreeRTOS, with real constraints around power, memory and reliability.

Work on the communication systems that hold the fleet together: LoRa mesh networking, cellular connectivity, BLE, and the protocols layered on top (CoAP, OSCORE, protobuf) that keep devices talking to each other and to the cloud efficiently and securely.

Design and tune algorithms that live close to the hardware: signal processing for sensor data, timing and synchronisation across a mesh of devices, filtering and estimation problems where getting the maths right actually matters.

Take ownership of firmware end-to-end, from initial design, through implementation and testing, to mass deployment and ongoing production support across a large, live fleet.

Debug hard, intermittent, field-only problems using logs, telemetry and a genuine understanding of the system, not just guesswork.

Work closely with hardware engineers on the analog and digital interfaces your firmware depends on (sensors, radios, power circuitry) so the whole system, not just your code, actually holds up.

Contribute to the quality and reliability of the platform as a whole: better patterns, better tooling, better ways of catching problems before they reach a paddock.

Support and mentor other engineers through design conversations, code reviews and generous context sharing.

What You'll Bring

Solid experience designing and delivering firmware for resource-constrained embedded devices, and the scars to show for it.

Strong C/C++ fundamentals and comfort working close to the hardware: interrupts, memory constraints, real-time behaviour, concurrency.

A genuine maths and/or physics background, or equivalent depth gained on the job. You should be comfortable reasoning about things like timing, signal behaviour, probability, or control systems, not just treating them as library calls.

Experience with wireless or networked communication systems (any of LoRa, BLE, cellular, mesh networking, or similar) and an interest in getting properly into the protocol details.

A strong sense of ownership. You want to understand why something works, not just that it works, and you follow problems all the way to root cause.

Comfortable working with low-level hardware and resource-constrained systems, and enjoy solving hard technical problems more than ticking boxes.

A strong team player who gives and receives feedback well.

Bonus Points For

Experience with RTOS internals (FreeRTOS or similar), and reasoning about scheduling, priorities and timing guarantees.

Experience with GPS/GNSS systems, time synchronisation, or distributed systems that need tight timing coordination across many nodes.

Background in signal processing, control theory, estimation/filtering (Kalman filters, etc.), or applied statistics.

Experience with cellular or other IoT communication technologies (LTE-M, NB-IoT, eSIM, or similar) and the quirks of getting low-power devices reliably online.

Genuine curiosity about farming, animal welfare, or hardware that has to survive outdoors, unattended, on a live animal. We can teach the domain, but the curiosity has to be there already.

Delicious snacks and drinks are available for your daily flow.

Healthy body, healthy mind. We're partnered with Southern Cross Health Insurance to support your well-being.

We offer 6 months of fully paid parental leave for primary caregivers, 4 weeks of fully paid secondary caregiver leave and many other parental benefits that support you and your family.

Our personal growth is important. Halter offers an annual $1000 self-development budget to be used for anything that fuels personal growth.

Our time to recharge is valued, we're offered wellness leave and unlimited paid annual leave.

Importantly, we offer an inclusive and attractive remuneration package made up of salary, benefits and an employee stock ownership plan.

Our Office First Approach

There's a reason you visit your friends in person, live with your family and don't do dinners over Zoom. Humans are wired for connection. We believe a world-class, in-person office culture is the best way for high-performing teams. Being office first is a core pillar of our culture. We believe in-person connections are key to driving your own growth, learning, impact, and building genuine long-lasting relationships. Strong relationships make it easier to disagree, give feedback, and do meaningful and aligned work. We don't like having heaps of rules or policies, but this means having strong, trusted relationships is critical.

We're office first, not office only.

This means working from the office everyday is our default setting, but we flex when we need to. We have a high-trust culture, so everyone is trusted to do what's best for Halter. Our office vibe is something special, it's hard to describe until you're here, but people at Halter who have come from fully remote or hybrid companies say they could never go back - the high energy and spectacular people they are now surrounded by everyday makes work so enjoyable. Your growth, your learning and your impact is truly unlimited here, and a big part of that comes from being together solving problems, innovating, building context, and constantly learning from each other.

Join Our Team

Halter is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive workplace - a place where we can each be ourselves and do the best work of our lives. Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the requirements, women and under-represented groups of candidates tend to only apply when they meet every requirement.

Why Our Team Loves Working At Halter

Work That Genuinely Matters.

Every now and again a company comes along that transforms an entire industry and leaves the world in a better place. Our team gets to be part of something truly meaningful, helping farmers improve their livelihoods, spend more time with their families, and build more sustainable operations.

Spectacular People Solving Hard Problems.

Our culture is designed for talented people to do work that changes lives. The team is filled with diverse, kind, and driven people who push each other to do their best work. You'll be thrown into the deep end, tackling complex challenges and building something tangible that solves real problems.

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