Firmware Engineer

Samsara; Austin (TX); Remote; USD 114,000 - 191,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible remote work

Development stipend

Health & parental leave

Job summary

Samsara is a Connected Operations Cloud platform that leverages IoT data to improve safety, efficiency, and sustainability in physical operations across industries like transportation, construction, and manufacturing.

As a Firmware Engineer, you will develop software running on millions of deployed devices, including battery-powered wireless sensors, Linux-based IoT gateways, and Internet-connected dashcams, working on everything from hardware platform bring-up to power management and secure

Qualifications

• 2+ years building firmware for resource-constrained systems on products that shipped to real customers and survived in the field.
• Fluency in C with deep understanding of compiler behavior, linker maps, stack traces, and memory debugging.
• Solid bare-metal and RTOS experience with Zephyr, FreeRTOS, or equivalent, including scheduling, memory, timing decisions, mutexes, and semaphores.
• Hands-on experience bringing up new boards, including first power-on of unproven hardware and debugging the seam between hardware and software.
• Fluency in low-level interfaces—SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, ADC—and ability to debug hardware-software integration using real bench tools like oscilloscopes

Responsibilities

• Shape hardware platform decisions by collaborating with electrical engineers on SoC selection, flash/RAM allocation, and sensor combinations, then validate choices through prototypes reaching real customers within months
• Bring up new platforms and prototypes from virgin silicon, configuring I/O, debugging system initialization, and validating designs across SPI, I2C, UART, and BLE interfaces
• Develop core firmware layers including peripheral drivers, secure bootloaders, device firmware updates, and power/connectivity management systems
• Design battery-powered device protocols and power management optimizations to maximize field device lifespan measured in years
• Collaborate across product, full-stack, mobile, and quality engineering teams to ensure firmware-produced data arrives intact and useful for end users

Skills

Firmware development

C programming

RTOS experience

Hardware bring-up

SPI

I2C

UART

CAN

ADC

Tools

Yocto

Buildroot

Job description

Samsara is a Connected Operations Cloud platform that leverages IoT data to improve safety, efficiency, and sustainability in physical operations across industries like transportation, construction, and manufacturing. As a Firmware Engineer, you will develop software running on millions of deployed devices, including battery-powered wireless sensors, Linux-based IoT gateways, and Internet-connected dashcams, working on everything from hardware platform bring-up to power management and secure bootloaders.

What You'll Do

• Shape hardware platform decisions by collaborating with electrical engineers on SoC selection, flash/RAM allocation, and sensor combinations, then validate choices through prototypes reaching real customers within months
• Bring up new platforms and prototypes from virgin silicon, configuring I/O, debugging system initialization, and validating designs across SPI, I2C, UART, and BLE interfaces
• Develop core firmware layers including peripheral drivers, secure bootloaders, device firmware updates, and power/connectivity management systems
• Design battery-powered device protocols and power management optimizations to maximize field device lifespan measured in years
• Collaborate across product, full-stack, mobile, and quality engineering teams to ensure firmware-produced data arrives intact and useful for end users

What You Need

• 2+ years building firmware for resource-constrained systems on products that shipped to real customers and survived in the field
• Fluency in C with deep understanding of compiler behavior, linker maps, stack traces, and memory debugging
• Solid bare-metal and RTOS experience with Zephyr, FreeRTOS, or equivalent, including proficiency with scheduling, memory, timing decisions, mutexes, and semaphores
• Hands-on experience bringing up new boards, including first power-on of unproven hardware and debugging the seam between hardware and software
• Fluency in low-level interfaces—SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, ADC—and ability to debug hardware-software integration using real bench tools like oscilloscopes

Nice to Have

• BLE expertise including PHY-level understanding and system orchestration for power-efficient operation
• Cellular IoT experience with LTE-M or NB-IoT modem integration, power state management, and certification processes (FCC, PTCRB)
• Embedded Linux gateway experience with Yocto or Buildroot, kernel drivers, and device trees
• OTA and fleet-scale device firmware update expertise including A/B partitioning, rollback strategies, and production quality assurance
• CAN and J1939 work on commercial vehicles, Python and Bash for tooling and hardware-in-the-loop test automation, factory floor experience with mass production processes

Annual base salary $113,645–$191,000 USD, plus initial RSU grant with no vesting cliff and ongoing refresh opportunities tied to performance; flexible remote work model, professional development stipend, comprehensive health and parental leave plans