Senior Motor Control Firmware Engineer

Halodi Robotics; San Carlos (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off

Equity

Job summary

1X is seeking an experienced embedded firmware engineer to own the motor control firmware for its NEO actuator platform. You will develop robust control loops, integrate sensors, and ensure safe, compliant interaction with people.

Candidates should have deep experience with FOC, encoders, EtherCAT/CAN, and real-time constraints on MCUs like STM32 or TI C2000. Join a team focused on bringing robotic motion to real-world environments with high reliability and demanding safety standards.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of embedded firmware development in C/C++ (7+ for senior roles).
• Shipped motor control firmware for BLDC or PMSM motors, including FOC and cascaded control loops.
• Solid grasp of motor physics and power electronics: inverters, gate drivers, current sensing, dead time and PWM.
• Experience with encoders and sensor interfaces such as SPI, BiSS-C, SSI or ABZ.
• Hands-on experience with EtherCAT/CAN or another real-time fieldbus.
• Comfort with interrupt-driven, hard real-time code on MCUs such as STM32, TI C2000 or similar.
• Hardware debugging with oscilloscopes, current probes, logic analyzers and dynamometers.

Responsibilities

• Own the motor control firmware that turns current into motion in every joint of NEO, and make it robust, safe and maintainable.
• Develop motor control firmware for BLDC/PMSM actuators, including field-oriented control, space-vector PWM, and current, velocity and position loops.
• Integrate and calibrate position sensing: encoders, Hall sensors, and multi-turn tracking.
• Tune control loops for high bandwidth, low torque ripple and low acoustic noise.
• Implement torque and impedance control modes that support safe, compliant interaction with people.
• Build fault detection and protection for faults with safe torque-off behavior.
• Design motor drive communication with deterministic timing to the central controller.
• Bring up new motor driver boards and support hardware design reviews for gate drivers and power stages.
• Test and validate firmware releases on the bench and on full robots, and build tools for automated tuning, logging and regression testing.

Skills

Embedded firmware

C/C++

Real-time systems

Motor control

Hardware debugging

RTOS

Safety-critical

Tools

STM32

TI C2000

Oscilloscopes

CAN/CAN FD

EtherCAT

Job description

1X is seeking an experienced embedded firmware engineer to own the motor control firmware for its NEO actuator platform. You will develop robust control loops, integrate sensors, and ensure safe, compliant interaction with people.

Candidates should have deep experience with FOC, encoders, EtherCAT/CAN, and real-time constraints on MCUs like STM32 or TI C2000. Join a team focused on bringing robotic motion to real-world environments with high reliability and demanding safety standards.