Embedded Software Engineer

Gram Games; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

GRAM is seeking an embedded firmware engineer to own from microcontrollers to the Linux robot runtime. You will bring up electronics, develop drivers, diagnostics, and deterministic communications to enable autonomous operation.

Responsibilities include building boot paths, update mechanisms, and fault response, plus hardware-software integration across sensors, actuators, and compute. On-site role focused on hardware-centric development.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, or related field or equivalent practical experience.
• Shipped C/C++ software on a custom electromechanical product using RTOS/embedded Linux, with hardware bring-up or field failure resolution.
• Implemented and debugged device drivers, interrupts, DMA, concurrency, memory ownership, and physical interfaces such as CAN, EtherCAT, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, or UART.
• Demonstrated real-time systems work with measured latency, jitter, bandwidth, CPU or memory use, and overload scenarios.
• Closed hardware-software defects with instrumentation and added automated tests or fault responses.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement C and C++ firmware, device drivers, hardware abstraction, real-time services, communication protocols, and robot-runtime components.
• Define timing, bandwidth, lifecycle, state-machine, calibration, diagnostic, and fault-response contracts across sensors, actuators, power electronics, compute, and autonomy.
• Bring up new boards and embedded compute using debuggers, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, bus analyzers, kernel traces, and telemetry.
• Build boot, provisioning, parameter, configuration, software-update, rollback, and recovery paths with explicit failure behavior and version compatibility.
• Develop simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, fault-injection, and regression tests that run automatically and gate releases.
• Measure and improve latency, jitter, resource use, startup time, communication reliability, logging, and recovery under load.
• Investigate integrated-machine failures across firmware, Linux, networking, electronics, controls, and autonomy, then carry corrections through reproducible tests.

Skills

C/C++ firmware

Real-time systems

Embedded Linux / RTOS

Device drivers

Diagnostics & fault response

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/CE/EE or equivalent

Tools

Debuggers

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Bus analyzers

Kernel traces

Telemetry tooling

Job description

The Mission

GRAM is a self-replication company creating machine labor for the physical economy.

Our first research frontier is self-preservation: the base case of physical self-replication. We are building a new class of machines called insectoids that can survive, coordinate, and recover without humans. We believe scalable machine labor requires more than single-agent task generality or machines shaped in our image.

About the role

You will own embedded software from microcontrollers and real-time control support through the Linux robot runtime. You will bring up new electronics; build drivers, deterministic communications, timing, health monitoring, calibration, logging, and fault response; and expose stable interfaces to higher-level autonomy.

Embedded Hardware owns released boards, network physical layers, connectors, and harnesses. Power Electronics owns high-current conversion and drive hardware. Robotics Systems owns subsystem integration. You own firmware, drivers, diagnostics, update behavior, and software behavior on those platforms. Success means versioned software produces known behavior on a known hardware configuration and remains observable, recoverable, and testable through degraded conditions.

What you will do

• Design and implement C and C++ firmware, device drivers, hardware abstraction, real-time services, communication protocols, and robot-runtime components.
• Define timing, bandwidth, lifecycle, state-machine, calibration, diagnostic, and fault-response contracts across sensors, actuators, power electronics, compute, and autonomy.
• Bring up new boards and embedded compute using debuggers, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, bus analyzers, kernel traces, and structured telemetry.
• Build boot, provisioning, parameter, configuration, software-update, rollback, and recovery paths with explicit failure behavior and version compatibility.
• Develop simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, fault-injection, and regression tests that run automatically and gate releases.
• Measure and improve latency, jitter, resource use, startup time, communication reliability, logging completeness, and recovery under load.
• Investigate integrated-machine failures across firmware, Linux, networking, electronics, controls, and autonomy, then carry corrections through reproducible tests and release evidence.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Shipped C or C++ software on a custom electromechanical product using an RTOS, embedded Linux, or both, including direct responsibility for hardware bring-up or field failure resolution.
• Implemented and debugged device drivers, interrupts, DMA, concurrency, memory ownership, and at least one physical interface such as CAN, EtherCAT, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, or UART.
• Demonstrated real-time systems work with measured latency, jitter, bandwidth, CPU or memory use, and behavior under overload or component failure.
• Closed a hardware-software defect using instrumentation and captured evidence, then added an automated test, monitor, or fault response that prevented recurrence.

Preferred experience

• Robotics, autonomous vehicles, aerospace, industrial controls, or other distributed real-time machines.
• Bootloaders, secure boot, over-the-air updates, Yocto, kernel or device-tree development, time synchronization, or deterministic networking.
• Hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure, safety-related embedded systems, fleet configuration, or production programming and calibration.

Working at GRAM

This role is based on-site in El Segundo and is inseparable from physical hardware. You will work at the bench and on the machine with electrical, controls, autonomy, system safety, data, manufacturing, and reliability engineers. Software changes will be evaluated against instrumented behavior, not only code-level tests.

Interview Process

Trust in the Process

GRAM expects deep trust and ownership from its people, and we begin by extending the same to candidates. We treat your information, prior work, and conversations with discretion.