Firmware Engineer

Tovala; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Tovala, a food-tech company, seeks a Senior Firmware Engineer to elevate our connected oven firmware across legacy Electric Imp/Squirrel and new ESP32 platforms. You will own end-to-end development, testing pipelines, and fleet deployment while applying AI tooling judiciously in embedded contexts.

You'll collaborate with hardware, thermal, QA, manufacturing, and backend teams and contribute to evolving our firmware development practices on a hybrid basis in the Chicago area.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional firmware or embedded software engineering.
• Experience shipping firmware to internet-connected devices in production.
• Strong fundamentals in C/C++ and embedded systems (RTOS, memory, timing).
• Experience with Python and build/testing tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, test, and ship firmware for connected ovens (Electric Imp Squirrel fleet; ESP32 platform).
• Own bug fixes, features, and performance improvements end-to-end from scoping to production monitoring.
• Write, monitor, and maintain automated firmware test pipelines.
• Design and execute test plans on bench and fleet subsets (tens of thousands of ovens).
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools while applying judgement for embedded contexts.
• Collaborate with mechanical, thermal, quality, and backend teams to root-cause cross-stack issues.

Skills

C/C++

Embedded systems

Python

Squirrel

ESP32

I2C SPI UART

BLE Wi-Fi TLS MQTT

CI/CD GitHub Actions

AI-assisted development

Communication

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering / Electrical Engineering

Tools

ESP-IDF

FreeRTOS

Electric Imp / Squirrel

GitHub Actions

Job description

We're Tovala, a food-tech company reinventing home cooking through hardware, software, and fresh food delivery. We're hiring a Senior Firmware Engineer to help raise the bar on the connected oven at the heart of every Tovala kitchen. You'll partner with our firmware lead (5+ years on the team) as a true peer and own meaningful slices of the fleet end-to-end. We run two oven fleets in parallel: a mature legacy fleet, built on the Electric Imp stack coded in Squirrel powering most of our installed base, and a new fleet built on our in-house IoT stack, utilizing ESP32, C and AWS. You'll focus on keeping the legacy fleet healthy and de-risking changes, while contributing to the new fleet as it grows.

AI-assisted development is reshaping how our team works, and we expect the same on firmware. You should have hands-on experience with tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or Copilot and strong opinions on applying them well in embedded contexts where the constraints differ from typical web/backend work.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, test, and ship firmware for our connected ovens — starting with the Electric Imp / Squirrel fleet that serves the majority of our customers today, and contributing to our new ESP32 based platform as it scales.

• Own bug fixes, feature additions, and performance/efficiency improvements end-to-end — from scoping through lab testing, staged fleet rollout, and production monitoring.

• Write, monitor and maintain automated firmware test pipelines.

• Design and execute test plans on the bench and on real fleet subsets. We push firmware to tens of thousands of ovens in customers’ kitchens, and we take that seriously.

• Use AI-assisted development tools as a core part of how you work — for code generation, debugging, test scaffolding, log analysis, and documentation — while applying the judgment that embedded work demands.

• Collaborate closely with our thermal, mechanical, and quality engineers, our manufacturing and ops partners, and our backend team to root-cause issues that span the full stack — firmware, hardware, cloud, and the factory floor.

• Help evolve our firmware development practices: code review standards, test infrastructure, release processes, and how we incorporate AI tooling responsibly.

• Document and communicate clearly so your work is durable, your tradeoffs are visible, and your teammates can build on top of what you ship.

What You’ll Bring

Required

• 5+ years of professional firmware or embedded software engineering experience, including shipping firmware to a fleet of internet-connected devices in production.

• Strong fundamentals in C/C++ and embedded systems — RTOS, memory, timing, interrupts, real-time constraints, and the discipline that comes with code running on devices you can’t easily reach.

• Experience working in Python, Bash for build tooling as well as testing automation

• Comfort working with (or willingness to quickly learn) the Squirrel programming language and the Electric Imp platform.

• Experience with common embedded interfaces and protocols: I2C, SPI, UART, and the network stacks (BLE, Wi-Fi, TLS, MQTT/HTTPS) that connected products depend on.

• Experience with CICD and automated test workflows, ideally Github automations and workflows..

• Demonstrated, hands-on experience with AI-assisted software development. You’ve integrated AI tools into your daily workflow and can speak concretely about how they’ve changed the way you build, test, and debug firmware.

• Excellent communication skills. You can explain technical decisions and tradeoffs clearly to engineers, hardware partners, and non-technical stakeholders, and you write things down.

• Strong problem-solving instincts — you dig into root causes, think about second-order effects, and find pragmatic solutions in messy real-world systems.

• A degree in computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, or commensurate experience.

Nice to Have

• Direct experience with Electric Imp OS and Squirrel.

• Experience with ESP32 and modern embedded toolchains (ESP-IDF, FreeRTOS).

• Experience with cloud IoT infrastructure — AWS IoT Core, device shadows, OTA pipelines, telemetry ingestion — even at a contributing rather than owning level.

• Familiarity with web technologies both front end and back end as well as databases — Typescript, React, Flask, Go, SQL

• Manufacturing and factory tooling: Experience building or supporting the systems that flash, provision, and verify firmware on the production line, and debugging them remotely with overseas manufacturing partners across time zones.

• Hardware-adjacent skills: For example, ability to read schematics and PCB layouts, comfort on a bench with an oscilloscope and logic analyzer, ability to spec an alternate component, basic familiarity with switch-mode power supplies.

• Experience working in a connected consumer product or food-tech company.

Who You Are

• Solution-Minded: You focus on outcomes, not output. You want to understand the customer problem before you start writing firmware, and you’re not precious about your approach if a better one emerges.

• AI-Forward: You see AI tools as a fundamental shift in how software — firmware included — gets built. You’re already using them daily and have thoughts on how teams should adopt them in safety-conscious, hardware-adjacent contexts.

• Cross-Functional Collaborator: You thrive working alongside hardware, thermal, quality, manufacturing, ops, and backend teammates. You communicate clearly and care about the end-to-end product experience.

• Startup Mindset: You’re comfortable in an environment where priorities evolve and where your work has direct, visible impact on customers’ kitchens.

• Curious and Adaptive: You stay current on hardware, firmware, and AI tooling, and you have a favorite microprocessor brand — maybe even a favorite oscilloscope brand.

Location

This role is hybrid with a strong preference for candidates based in or near Chicago, IL (HQ) or Urbana, IL (The Product Manufactory, our R&D and prototyping shop). For the right candidate, primarily remote work is possible, provided you have your own electronics bench and equipment.

Compensation & Benefits

Our Values

Put the Team First: We put what is best for the broader team ahead of what is best for ourselves or our immediate department.

Get S#!t Done (Well): We celebrate people at all levels for delivering high impact work that expands the bounds of what we’re able to do.

Connect the Dots: We engage with curiosity to learn how our work impacts others so that we can problem-solve holistically and work collaboratively.

Be Direct: We share our perspective openly and directly, even when it feels difficult to do so.

Embrace the Obstacles: We rise to meet challenges with a sense of urgency, resolve, and optimism.

Champion the Customer: We consider and prioritize our customer in all of our decisions.

At Tovala we’re committed to building a workplace that represents a variety of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Everyone is welcome here!