Senior - Senior Staff Firmware Engineer

EQ3; Fremont (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

EQ3 is seeking a Staff firmware engineer to own the microcontroller software that drives our robots, with emphasis on safety-critical behavior and reliable motion control. The role collaborates across hardware and software teams, directly with the CTO to set direction and improve how we build and operate.

You will develop closed-loop motor control, implement robust communication with edge compute, and raise the bar on safety through rigorous state machines and fault handling.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of embedded or firmware experience on production hardware.
• Experience with bare-metal and RTOS environments.
• Proficiency in C/C++ and/or Rust for firmware development.
• Background in motor control or motion systems (PWM, timers, DMA).
• Strong understanding of ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers and peripherals.

Responsibilities

• Develop closed-loop motor control firmware for precision and safety.
• Own the wire protocol between MCU and edge compute, including fault handling.
• Filter and cross-check sensor signals to avoid trusting a single source.
• Design fail-safe state machines, watchdogs, and safe fault states.
• Build firmware observability and health reporting across fleets.

Skills

Embedded firmware

ARM Cortex-M

Real-time/RTOS

Motor control

Sensor data processing

Safety-critical design

Tools

JTAG/SWD

Oscilloscope

Job description

About us

We're a well-funded automation robotics startup building robots that take on real work in the real world. We're a small, fast-moving team of engineers who like hard problems and shipping hardware, and we're looking for a firmware engineer to own the software closest to the hardware on our next generation of products.

The Role

You'll own the firmware that makes our robots move: the bare-metal and RTOS code on the motor-control microcontroller, where a command becomes motion and a sensor reading becomes a decision. Our robots work in a safety-critical setting, so the firmware has to make unsafe behaviour structurally impossible, not just unlikely. You'll work across disciplines with electrical, controls and software teams, and directly with the CTO on the hardware interface. At the Staff level, you'll also set technical direction and change how the wider team builds and operates.

What you'll do

• Develop closed-loop motor control firmware, covering PWM drive, current sensing, stall detection and the timing budgets that keep motion precise and safe
• Own the firmware side of the wire protocol between the microcontroller and the robot's edge compute, including framing and failure behaviour when the link drops mid-operation
• Acquire, filter and independently cross-check sensor signals, so no critical signal is trusted on a single source
• Design fail-closed safety interlocks and state machines, with watchdogs, brown-out handling and a defined safe state for every fault
• Build firmware observability, including logging that survives a reset, remote diagnostics and health reporting across the fleet
• Bring up and debug new boards, and drive issues to root cause on either side of the hardware/software boundary
• Expand hardware-in-the-loop testing and prove safety behaviour under fault injection

What we're looking for

We care more about depth in embedded fundamentals and a track record of shipping than about any one tool or technology. You don't need to tick every box below.

• 5+ years of embedded or firmware experience, bare-metal and/or RTOS, in C/C++ and/or Rust, shipped on production hardware
• Motor or motion control experience, such as PWM, timers, DMA, current sensing and control loops
• Microcontroller depth on ARM Cortex-M (STM32 or similar), including interrupts, clock trees and peripherals
• Experience building safety-critical firmware where failure has physical consequences (medical, automotive, avionics, robotics or industrial)
• Strong state machine design, including reasoning through every fault path
• Comfortable in the lab with a scope, logic analyser and JTAG/SWD
• Solid real-time reasoning across deadlines, jitter and worst-case timing

Desirable (any of the following)

• Serial and hardware interfaces such as UART, SPI, I2C, RS485 or custom wire protocols
• Firmware observability, remote diagnostics or fault forensics from the field
• Power electronics or gate-driver debugging
• Embedded Linux or Jetson-class platforms
• Sensor fusion, motion planning or control theory
• Experience in a regulated or audited industry