Senior Firmware Engineer

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

Benefits offered by this job

Snacks and drinks

Health insurance

Parental leave

Self-development budget

Wellness leave

Stock options

Job summary

Halter, based in Auckland, is seeking an experienced firmware engineer to design and implement robust embedded C/C++ firmware for our collars running on FreeRTOS, with constraints on power, memory and reliability.

You will work on wireless communication systems (LoRa, BLE, cellular) and protocols (CoAP, OSCORE, protobuf) that connect devices to the cloud securely and efficiently. Take ownership end-to-end and collaborate closely with hardware engineers across a live fleet.

Qualifications

• Experience designing firmware for resource-constrained embedded devices.
• Strong C/C++ fundamentals and near-hardware work.
• Experience with real-time systems, interrupts, timing, and concurrency.
• Experience with wireless or networked communications (LoRa, BLE, cellular).
• Ability to debug hard, field-only issues with logs and telemetry.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement robust embedded firmware for our collars running FreeRTOS.
• Work on LoRa mesh networking, cellular connectivity, BLE, and related protocols.
• Design and tune algorithms close to hardware (signal processing, timing, estimation).
• Own firmware end-to-end from design to production support across a live fleet.
• Debug complex field issues using logs, telemetry and system understanding.
• Collaborate with hardware engineers on interfaces and platform reliability.
• Mentor teammates through code reviews and design discussions.

Skills

Firmware design for embedded devices

C/C++ fundamentals

Real-time systems and interrupts

Wireless communication systems

Debugging field issues

Team collaboration

Tools

FreeRTOS

LoRa

CoAP

OSCORE

protobuf

BLE/Cellular

Job description

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.

Our Benefits

• 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.