Embedded Systems & FPGA Engineer for Real-World Hardware

Obsidian; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is seeking experienced Software and Firmware Engineers to support an advanced engineering and AI research initiative with a leading technology organization. We are looking for deeply hands-on engineers who have designed, implemented, integrated, tested, debugged, or validated software and firmware that directly interfaces with real-world hardware.

This role focuses on embedded firmware, FPGA/RTL, flight software, and hardware test automation.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software, firmware, FPGA, or embedded systems engineering experience, including at least 3 years hands-on with real hardware.
• Responsible engineer for production hardware-connected software or firmware across lifecycle from requirements to deployment.
• Deep technical expertise in embedded firmware/RTOS, FPGA/RTL, or flight software and safety/mission-critical systems.
• Strong command of C/C++, Python, RTOS/bare-metal development, device drivers, bootloaders, embedded Linux, and related interfaces.

Responsibilities

• Apply hands-on software, firmware, and digital hardware expertise to technically complex tasks with real physical systems.
• Review and evaluate embedded firmware, FPGA/RTL designs, flight software, test automation frameworks, hardware interfaces, and system workflows.
• Analyze architecture trade-offs involving real-time performance, timing, memory, compute resources, interfaces, and hardware integration.
• Assess technical correctness, robustness, and feasibility of engineering solutions for hardware-connected systems.
• Identify implementation errors, race conditions, timing issues, interface failures, and resource constraints.
• Develop or review rigorous engineering problems, reference implementations, test cases, and evaluation criteria.
• Draw on experience with development, integration, hardware bring-up, debugging, verification, and deployment.

Skills

C/C++

Python

RTOS/bare-metal

Device drivers

Embedded Linux

Verilog/SystemVerilog/VHDL

FPGA/RTL

Hardware bring-up

Tools

JTAG/SWD debuggers

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Hardware simulators

HIL/SIL environments

CI infrastructure

Job description

Mercor is seeking experienced Software and Firmware Engineers to support an advanced engineering and AI research initiative with a leading technology organization. We are looking for deeply hands-on engineers who have designed, implemented, integrated, tested, debugged, or validated software and firmware that directly interfaces with real-world hardware.

This role focuses on embedded firmware, FPGA/RTL, flight software, and hardware test automation.