Senior Firmware Engineer
CloudKitchens3 days ago
Pittsburgh, PA, USASenior
Base Salary
$158k - $218k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design and maintain embedded C firmware for custom microcontroller boards, including device drivers, board support, communication protocols, and application state machines.
- Partner with electrical engineers on component selection, schematic reviews, debug access, testability, board bring-up, and failure investigation.
- Implement predictable real-time behavior across interrupts, DMA, peripheral interfaces, and bare-metal or RTOS tasks while addressing concurrency, latency, and memory constraints.
- Define board-to-robot-software contracts covering commands, state reporting, timeouts, fault handling, and version compatibility.
- Implement startup, watchdog, brownout, communication-loss, recovery, diagnostics, and safe-state behavior.
- Own bootloaders, validated firmware updates, recovery paths, board identification, configuration, calibration, and deployment compatibility checks.
- Build automated unit, integration, hardware-in-the-loop, fault-injection, and long-duration tests, plus production bring-up, calibration, manufacturing, and diagnostic tools.
- Investigate production issues, perform root-cause analysis, document designs and troubleshooting procedures, and support teammates working with embedded systems.
Requirements
- Demonstrated experience shipping and supporting microcontroller firmware on custom hardware beyond the prototype stage.
- Strong C or C++ skills for resource-constrained systems, including memory, interrupts, concurrency, peripheral registers, and real-time execution.
- Practical bare-metal and RTOS experience.
- Hands-on board bring-up and debugging experience, including reading schematics and datasheets and using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and SWD/JTAG or equivalent tools.
- Experience implementing and troubleshooting CAN, SPI, I2C, and UART interfaces.
- Understanding of timing, corrupted or missing data, communication recovery, reliability, automated testing, reproducible builds, version control, code review, and diagnostics.
- Python or comparable scripting skills for test and development tools.
- Ability to exercise independent judgment, prioritize effectively, surface risks, distinguish evidence from assumptions, and communicate across software and hardware teams.
- Preferred experience with CAN-FD, CANopen/CiA 402, distributed device protocols, Linux-based robot software, Ethernet, bootloaders, secure firmware updates, persistent configuration, calibration, production programming or test fixtures, motor drivers, encoders, PWM/ADC synchronization, control loops, robotics, industrial automation, electromechanical products, hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure, or Bazel-based embedded builds.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including HSA options.
- Company-paid short- and long-term life and disability insurance.
- Voluntary accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and supplemental life insurance options.
- Pet insurance discount, 401(k), HSA, and flexible spending accounts for healthcare, dependent care, and commuting.
- Discretionary vacation, eight paid holidays per year, paid sick time, bereavement leave, and paid parental leave.
- Pittsburgh office role requiring onsite work five days per week.
About CloudKitchens
CloudKitchens builds delivery-first commercial kitchen facilities and restaurant software for food and beverage operators. It leases turnkey kitchen space and provides tools for order management, delivery logistics, and multi-brand operations, enabling restaurants and entrepreneurs to expand with lower upfront costs. The company is privately held and headquartered in Los Angeles, serving markets across the U.S. with a mix of owned sites and enterprise solutions.