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Physical Intelligence is developing foundation models and learning algorithms to power robots and physically-actuated devices. This Embedded Engineer role is part of the Runtime team and will collaborate deeply with Research, Hardware, and Fleet teams.
You will drive the architecture and implementation of embedded firmware for devices critical to Physical Intelligence's data collection infrastructure. Working across hardware and software teams, you'll ensure new devices integrate seamlessly with existing and future data pipelines.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading embedded Linux system bring-up for real-time sensor processing, including driver development for high-speed sensors, BSP customization, kernel configuration and debugging, hardware bring-up, and performance tuning across the hardware/software boundary.
- Collaborating with hardware and software teams to debug complex timing issues, race conditions, and hardware-software interface bugs using hardware abstraction tools and laboratory equipment.
- Analyzing and reducing power consumption for battery-operated devices, including optimizing radio sleep states and sensor low-power modes.
- Architecting and implementing embedded firmware solutions from concept to production on aggressive schedules.
- Turning ambiguous product goals into functional requirements and leading initiatives to completion.
This is a hands-on role requiring deep technical expertise in embedded systems, real-time processing, and the ability to work across multiple technical disciplines.
Requirements:
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
- Strong software engineering and infrastructure skills, including building data pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and tools for rapid iteration.
- Hands-on experience with hardware and comfort debugging at the hardware-software boundary.
- Demonstrated experience leading initiatives from concept to production on aggressive schedules.
- Experience leading initial board bring-up and software design for first-of-their-kind embedded devices.
- Hands-on experience with SPI, I2C, UART, USB, and ability to debug complex hardware-software interactions.
- Experience architecting, implementing, and debugging concurrent and multithreaded firmware services.
- Deep understanding of modern operating systems, computer architecture, and trade-offs between compute, memory, and storage.
- Experience bringing up and integrating sensors on embedded systems (camera system bring-up is a plus).
- Proficiency in C++.
- Familiarity with Bash scripting and Python for tooling and automation.
- Strong communication skills for collaborating with hardware, software, and research teams.
Bonus: Direct experience with Linux Kernel development, including writing or debugging drivers, managing device trees, or optimizing kernel-space performance.
