Senior Embedded Platform Engineer – Multi-MCU RTOS

Ford Motor Company; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 284,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Tuition assistance

Employee discounts

Job summary

Ford Motor Company is seeking a Platform Firmware Engineer to own core firmware for a distributed multi-MCU system running Zephyr RTOS. You will design reusable drivers and services, build test infrastructure, and ensure reliability with watchdog, PLCA, PTP, and robust serial protocols.

You will bring up hardware, verify silicon with debugging tools, and collaborate across teams to enable scalable, power-aware configurations for automotive applications.

Qualifications

• Design and implement reusable platform software for a multi-MCU embedded system.
• Architect and implement device reliability infrastructure (watchdog, supervision, fault reporting).
• Own real-time Ethernet/PLCA/IEEE 1588/PTP with UDP transport for reliable networks.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement reusable platform software across a multi-MCU distributed system.
• Architect and implement device reliability infrastructure with watchdog and supervision.
• Own RT Ethernet, including 10BASE-T1S, time sync, and UDP transport.
• Develop and maintain custom serial protocols over UART/I2C/SPI for MCU exchanges.
• Specify and test bare-metal and RTOS firmware with drivers and DT integration.
• Build component test infrastructure (unit/integration/HIL) for drivers and libraries.
• Bring up hardware and verify software against silicon with debugging tools.
• Define system power, compute, and comms requirements for multiple configurations.
• Profile power, CPU, and bus usage to drive optimizations.
• Collaborate with verification/validation to build test plans and validate firmware.

Skills

Embedded software

C programming

Debugging/hardware bring-up

Team collaboration

Technical leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering / Computer Science

Tools

Zephyr RTOS

JTAG/SWD

Build tools (CMake, Bazel, SCons)

Twister

Job description

Ford Motor Company is seeking a Platform Firmware Engineer to own core firmware for a distributed multi-MCU system running Zephyr RTOS. You will design reusable drivers and services, build test infrastructure, and ensure reliability with watchdog, PLCA, PTP, and robust serial protocols.

You will bring up hardware, verify silicon with debugging tools, and collaborate across teams to enable scalable, power-aware configurations for automotive applications.