Firmware Engineering Manager (Products & Systems)

Zero Motorcycles Inc.; Scotts Valley (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k)-matching plan

Paid time off

Job summary

Zero Motorcycles Inc. in Scotts Valley, CA is seeking an experienced Firmware Products Lead. You will manage a team of engineers across various disciplines to ensure the firmware of electric motorcycles meets quality and performance standards. Your role will involve direct leadership, collaboration across teams, and a commitment to AI tools in architectural decisions. A competitive salary of $180,000 to $200,000 is offered, alongside a comprehensive benefits package including health insurance and a 401(k)-matching plan.

Qualifications

• Lead the Firmware Products team comprising 8-12 engineers.
• Translate user needs into testable work for the firmware.
• Drive AI adoption for technical decision-making.

Responsibilities

• Oversee the delivery of firmware behavior and performance.
• Ensure effective cross-functional collaboration.
• Keep the firmware backlog focused on impactful priorities.

Skills

Leadership

Embedded systems expertise

C/C++ development

Cross-functional collaboration

AI fluency

Education

10-15 years of embedded development experience

3-5 years leading a multi-discipline team

Tools

UARTs

JTAG

Oscilloscopes

Job description

Overview

We build electric motorcycles. The ride feels simple and alive. The rest should be too.

We are not there yet. You will help us get there.

The Product Experience (P.Ex) organization is responsible for how the motorcycle feels to use. We design and build the firmware that runs on the bike, the dash the rider sees, the mobile app they carry, the diagnostic tools used in the field, and the cloud systems that connect them.

The Firmware Products team, within the P.Ex org, is responsible for delivering the behavior of the motorcycle itself. The team spans firmware development, battery performance engineering, and test engineering, owning the full value chain from firmware requirements to field validation. Every safety decision, performance characteristic, and response the bike makes to the rider runs through this system. Riders love and trust it.

We are moving from something that works well to something riders and technicians can trust without thinking, where we are deliberate about what deserves to exist, make it excellent, and get out of the way. We are looking for a leader who can learn alongside the team and mentor them to learn continuously without disrupting the care they have for each other.

What you will help build

We are building a system where we can quickly and reliably understand how what we ship behaves in the real world, and use that to make better product decisions. This goes beyond processes or frameworks. In practice, it looks like:

• A change is made and within hours we can see how it affected real riders, not just whether tests passed.
• When something goes wrong, we can reconstruct what the rider experienced, how the system responded, and which interactions or changes led to it.
• We reduce the time between making a change and understanding its impact, without increasing risk.
• What we learn from real-world behavior directly changes what we build next.
• We use that learning to decide what not to build, what to simplify, and where to focus next.

If answering these depends on meetings, reports, or interpretation, the system is not giving us the feedback we need.

What You'll Do

You will lead the Firmware Products team end to end, leading 8-12 engineers across firmware development, battery performance, and test, spread across Scotts Valley, Netherlands, and India. You decide what problems need to be solved next, and you work with the Firmware, BMS, and Vehicle Architects to ensure they are framed and addressed well. You will care deeply about the people on the team and invest in their growth as engineers, system thinkers, and craftspeople.

You walk in every Monday with more ideas to make your team shoot for greatness than you have the time to implement.

Team Leadership and Growth

• Understand what each person on the team is working toward and what is getting in their way, and act on it continuously.
• Give direct, specific feedback and create the conditions for a team that improves how it works and becomes self‑organizing over time.

Firmware as a Product

• Think about what riders need from firmware before thinking about what the team should build. That order is not negotiable. Translate user and business needs into small, testable work.
• Keep the backlog honest by saying no to what does not move the product forward, and do not let closing tickets masquerade as solving problems.

Stay Technically Hands‑On

• Get in the trenches with Firmware, BMS, and Vehicle Architects to create the conditions for strong work, clear priorities, protected focus, and problems framed well enough to be worth solving.
• Write, review, debug, and critique with enough technical depth that architects trust you with their hardest problems and decisions.

Delivery System and Flow

• Own and improve the system from idea to field so the team learns faster without increasing fragility.
• Keep batches small, integration continuous, and validation part of building, and surface risk early enough for the team to act on it.

Instrumentation and Field Learning

• Be accountable for firmware behavior across real riders, environments, and failure modes, and ensure the system captures what is needed to understand it.
• Build feedback loops from field behavior into planning so the team learns from usage and not just incidents.

Cross-functional Collaboration

• Review hardware, vendor firmware, and system decisions, and ensure firmware behavior stays coherent from component to customer experience.
• Work with CX, PMO, and leadership to ensure releases reach customers smoothly, field feedback shapes priorities, and commitments reflect technical reality and surface risk early.
• Represent the team's work to the exec team and marketing in terms that shape decisions, not just inform them.

AI Adoption

• Use AI tools fluently and daily, with tools like Claude Code as a starting point, and push well into using AI as a genuine thought partner in architecture, debugging, prioritization, and technical decision‑making.
• Drive AI adoption across the team and upward, using it to unlock higher performance and advocating for tools and capabilities the team needs.

What You Bring

You bring 10-15 years of embedded development experience and at least 3-5 years leading a multi‑discipline team. You will be stretched, but you will not be doing it alone. You do not need to check every box on this list. If you bring the hunger to close gaps and the self‑awareness to know where they are, the team and the manager will meet you there.

People Leadership

• You have grown engineers who were not ready for the next level and got them there. You have given feedback that was hard to hear, in a way that strengthened the relationship.
• You have managed across locations and found ways to make distance irrelevant to the quality of someone's experience on the team.

Product Thinking

• You have made prioritization calls that are right in the long term, even when unpopular, and explain them clearly.
• You have worked in environments where the temptation to build more was constant, and you developed the discipline to build less, better.

Embedded Systems and Firmware Depth

• You have deep experience shipping multithreaded, real‑time embedded firmware in C / C++ and can smell problems before they surface.
• You are proficient debugging embedded systems at the bench. You read schematics and datasheets, and you are comfortable with UARTs, JTAG, and oscilloscopes.

Delivery and Flow

• You have moved teams toward smaller batches in constrained environments and made a measurable difference.
• You have shipped in safety‑critical systems and improved CI/CD to move faster without compromising integrity.

Collaboration and Influence

• You have worked effectively with technical experts to move decisions forward without needing to win every argument.
• You have navigated competing priorities across teams without creating turf wars or waiting for someone above you to resolve the tension.

AI Fluency

• You use AI tools daily to think through hard problems, well beyond basic usage.
• You have driven adoption and apply sound judgment on where AI can and cannot be trusted in safety‑critical systems.

What You Can Expect

• Real cross‑functional work with Firmware, BMS, Vehicle Architecture, PMO, CX, and Hardware in problem spaces that require you to understand the whole system.
• A team and management that will tell you the truth about your work, fight for your growth, and have your back when things get hard.
• Problems that are not fully defined, where your judgment about what matters next is what the role actually requires.
• A system that is in use, under pressure, and not finished, which means the work you do here has consequences that show up in the field.

Location

Scotts Valley, CA

Physical Requirements

• Ability to communicate in real‑time with internal and external partners.
• Ability to safely and effectively navigate a lab environment.
• Ability to occasionally lift 30 pounds.
• Ability to work for extended periods in face‑to‑face meetings, on computers, or in a lab environment.

We believe diversity is our strength, and inclusion is our foundation. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we are committed to building a workplace where everyone — regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, or background — can thrive. We celebrate individuality, amplify diverse voices, and strive to foster an environment where everyone feels seen, heard, and empowered to do their best work. Together, we're shaping a future that works for all.

The estimated salary range for a new hire in this position is $180,000 to $200,000. Actual salary may vary depending on job‑related factors, which may include candidate's knowledge, skills, and experience. In addition to regular salary, Zero offers a comprehensive benefits package including health, life, and disability insurance, paid time off, and a 401(k)-matching plan.