Robotics Firmware Engineer

Ultra; Brooklyn (OH); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Ultra is seeking a Robotics Firmware Engineer to join our in-person team in Brooklyn, NY. You will own firmware across hardware and software interfaces, from drivers to control loops, ensuring reliability in lab and customer environments.

You will diagnose intermittent failures end-to-end, optimize Linux performance, and help implement a safety system with real guarantees for warehouse operations. You'll prototype and onboard new devices and contribute to robust hardware health metrics.

Qualifications

• 2+ years shipping firmware on real robots or unforgiving embedded systems.

Responsibilities

• Debug and permanently fix HW/SW interface failures that kill uptime.
• Tweak Linux parameters to improve OS performance.
• Help design and implement a safety system with real guarantees.
• Write control interfaces for new devices (EE, cameras, scanners).
• Identify metrics for predictive failure signals and hardware health.

Skills

Firmware development

Embedded systems

Linux tuning

Debugging

Hardware/software integration

Tools

Linux

Job description

Overview

We’re seeking a Robotics Firmware Engineer to join our NYC-based team (we are an in-person company) to own the hard problems where software meets metal. Our robots run every day in the lab and at customer sites; when joints freeze, buses flake, or safety state is wrong, you are the person who finds the real cause and ships the fix. We are an early stage company moving very fast in a rapidly growing space, and welcome people from any background as long as you’re excited to join our mission, drive immediate impact, and create a future where automation is accessible to all.

Who You Are

• 2+ years shipping firmware on real robots or similarly unforgiving embedded systems
• You’re dangerous with LLMs because you know when they're wrong
• Comfortable from scope traces and schematics up through kernel/driver and into application control loops
• You’ve identified, diagnosed, and fixed intermittent failures end-to‑end (timing, noise, thermal, state machines)
• You produce production‑quality code and can pinch‑hit outside pure firmware when the robot needs it
• You can look at a ticket backlog and identify the most important thing to work on next

What You’ll Do

• Debug and permanently fix HW/SW interface failures that kill uptime (actuators, buses, sensors, recovery paths)
• Tweak all the Linux parameters nobody knows about to get reliable, predictable OS performance
• Help design and implement a safety system with real guarantees for Operator's warehouse work
• Write control interfaces for any new devices we want to onboard (new EEs, cameras, barcode scanners, etc)
• Identify key metrics to monitor for predictive failure signals and overall hardware health

Bonus Points

• MechE/EE experience for designing and manufacturing robotics components including custom PCBs, engineered parts, and more.