Senior Firmware Engineer, Robotics

Dexmate Inc.; Fremont, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Dexmate Inc. is seeking a Senior Firmware Engineer to own the low-level firmware stack powering our general-purpose robots. You will architect, implement, test, and release production firmware for actuator controllers, sensing systems, power electronics, and real-time communication devices.

This hands-on role spans MCU selection, board bring-up, BSP and driver development, and real-time control. You’ll collaborate with electrical, mechanical, controls, and software engineers to scale prototypes

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional embedded firmware development in robotics or related fields.
• Strong C and C++ programming in resource-constrained environments.
• Deep understanding of interrupts, DMA, timers, scheduling, concurrency, memory and real-time behavior.
• Experience with MCU families such as ARM Cortex-M, TI C2000, STM32, or Nordic nRF.
• Hands-on experience with motor-control or actuator firmware including real-time control loops.
• Driver-level experience with EtherCAT, CAN/CAN FD, SPI, I2C, and UART.
• Board bring-up and debugging across firmware/hardware boundary.
• Proficiency with JTAG/SWD, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and protocol analyzers.
• Ability to read schematics and datasheets; timing diagrams.
• Experience with CI/CD, automated testing, and version control.
• Strong cross-functional communication with electrical, controls, mechanical, and software teams.

Responsibilities

• Architecting and developing production-grade firmware for actuators, sensors, power systems and communication devices.
• Owning firmware architecture across bootloaders, BSPs, HALs, RTOS services, drivers, diagnostics and update mechanisms.
• Bringing up and validating PCBs, including peripheral init, clocks, memory configuration and interrupts.
• Developing deterministic, real-time firmware on bare-metal and RTOS platforms with attention to timing and power.
• Developing and optimizing motor-control firmware with current, torque, velocity and position control loops.
• Implementing real-time communication stacks (EtherCAT, CAN, SPI, I2C, UART).
• Designing firmware safety and reliability mechanisms including fault detection and safe-state behavior.
• Building observability and field-diagnostic capabilities for firmware.
• Developing automated unit/integration/HIL tests and CI/CD for firmware.
• Supporting manufacturing, calibration and production troubleshooting.
• Reading schematics and contributing firmware input during design reviews.
• Debugging complex firmware-electronics-hardware interactions.
• Establishing coding standards and review practices as the team scales.

Skills

Embedded firmware

C/C++ programming

RTOS

Bare-metal

PCB bring-up

Firmware testing

Sensor interfaces

Motor-control firmware

EtherCAT

CAN/CAN FD

Debugging tools

Code reviews

Version control

Job description

About Dexmate

Dexmate is building the foundation for physical AI — combining a new generation of robots with a universal Physical AI OS, making robots as easy to build and deploy as software. Today, robotics is fragmented, slow, and closed: most builders are forced to reinvent the same stack again and again, and most ideas never make it past the prototype stage. We exist to change that. Our mission is to democratize robotics by lowering the barrier to entry, delivering a plug-and-play platform for developers, researchers, and enterprises, and cultivating an open ecosystem that accelerates the evolution of physical AI.

If you want to help shape the next layer of human capability — and believe the future of robotics should be built together, not in isolation — we'd love to build it with you.

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Firmware Engineer to own the low-level firmware stack powering our general-purpose robots. You will architect, implement, test, and release production firmware for actuator controllers, sensing systems, power electronics, and real-time communication devices.

This is a highly hands-on role spanning the complete firmware lifecycle — from MCU selection, board bring-up, BSP and driver development to real-time control, system diagnostics, validation, and production deployment. You will work closely with electrical, mechanical, controls, and higher-level software engineers to define clean interfaces between hardware and the broader robotics software stack.

Your firmware will be among the first code running on every new robot subsystem, and you will help establish the architecture and engineering practices required to scale our robots from rapidly evolving prototypes to reliable deployed systems.

Responsibilities

• Architecting and developing production-grade firmware for actuator controllers, sensor interfaces, power systems, and communication devices

• Owning firmware architecture across bootloaders, BSPs, hardware abstraction layers, RTOS services, device drivers, diagnostics, and firmware update mechanisms

• Bringing up and validating new PCBs, including peripheral initialization, clock and memory configuration, interrupt handling, DMA, and low-level hardware interfaces

• Implementing deterministic, real-time firmware on bare-metal and RTOS platforms, with careful consideration of timing, concurrency, memory, compute, and power constraints

• Developing and optimizing motor-control firmware, including current, torque, velocity, and position control loops, encoder interfaces, PWM generation, and fault handling

• Implementing and maintaining real-time communication stacks, including EtherCAT, CAN/CAN FD, SPI, I2C, and UART

• Designing firmware safety and reliability mechanisms, including fault detection, watchdogs, recovery paths, safe-state behavior, and graceful degradation

• Building observability and field-diagnostic capabilities that make firmware behavior measurable, traceable, and debuggable

• Developing automated unit, integration, hardware-in-the-loop, stress, and fault-injection testing for embedded systems

• Building and maintaining firmware CI/CD, validation, versioning, and release processes

• Supporting manufacturing, calibration, end-of-line testing, and production troubleshooting as systems move from prototype to deployment

• Reading schematics, PCB layouts, and component datasheets and contributing firmware input during electrical and system design reviews

• Debugging complex interactions across firmware, electronics, controls, and higher-level robotics software

• Establishing firmware coding standards, architecture guidelines, documentation, and code-review practices as the team scales

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional embedded firmware development experience in robotics, automotive, industrial automation, or complex consumer electronics, including experience shipping production-deployed products

• Strong C and C++ programming skills in resource-constrained bare-metal and RTOS environments

• Deep understanding of embedded systems fundamentals, including interrupts, DMA, timers, scheduling, concurrency, memory layout, boot sequences, and real-time behavior

• Experience developing firmware across multiple modern MCU families, such as ARM Cortex-M, TI C2000, STM32, or Nordic nRF; breadth across vendors and architectures is valued over specialization in a single platform

• Hands-on experience developing motor-control or actuator firmware, including FOC, current or torque control, velocity control, position control, or similar real-time control systems

• Driver-level experience with embedded communication protocols, including EtherCAT, CAN/CAN FD, SPI, I2C, and UART

• Demonstrated experience with board bring-up, peripheral-driver development, and debugging across the firmware and hardware boundary

• Proficiency with embedded debugging and laboratory tools, including JTAG/SWD debuggers, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and protocol analyzers

• Ability to read and interpret schematics, PCB layouts, component datasheets, and timing diagrams

• Experience developing reliable, testable, and maintainable firmware using modern version control, code review, automated testing, and continuous integration practices

• Strong cross-functional communication skills and comfort working directly with electrical, controls, mechanical, and software engineers

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience scaling firmware from early prototypes to production across hundreds or thousands of deployed units

• Experience developing bootloaders, secure firmware update systems, rollback mechanisms, and field-diagnostic tooling

• Familiarity with functional safety or embedded security standards such as ISO 26262, IEC 61508, ISO 13849, or IEC 62443

• Python experience for firmware tooling, test automation, manufacturing tests, and HIL frameworks

• Experience implementing or integrating EtherCAT master or slave stacks, such as SOEM or equivalent

• Experience with power-electronics firmware, including battery-management systems, motor inverters, DC-DC converters, or charging systems

• Experience with firmware profiling and optimization across timing, memory, compute, and power constraints

• Prior experience working in a vertically integrated robotics or hardware startup

• Hands-on use of AI coding tools such as Claude Code or Codex to accelerate implementation, test generation, debugging, documentation, and firmware-development workflows