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Salary: USD 155,000 - 209,000 / annual
ConnectDER is a venture-backed, US-based company developing next-generation distributed energy resource (DER) technology. The flagship product, the ConnectDER Meter Socket Adapter, reduces cost and interconnection time for solar, EV charging, and home battery storage. The company is based in Philadelphia with 50+ employees working across remote, hybrid, and on-site roles.
This is a hands-on technical lead role within a 3-person firmware engineering team, reporting to the Director of Electrical Engineering. You will own the device software system end-to-end: defining architecture, breaking work into well-scoped workstreams, driving iterative delivery, writing production code, and delegating tasks to team members.
You will be responsible for the IslandDER digital interface, built to comply with a new device-to-device communication standard co-developed with leading battery and inverter companies for secure integration with home batteries (e.g., Tesla Powerwall) and Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) solutions. The software monitors voltage and current, drives relays, performs safety checks, and communicates securely with third-party devices and the ConnectDER cloud.
The device software comprises four subsystems you will own: Data Acquisition (grid/microgrid metering), Control (real-time, safety-critical), Communication (Ethernet, WireGuard, multi-core interfaces), and Integration (fault tolerance, firmware updates, security, logging).
Key responsibilities include: owning overall device software architecture and breaking complex requirements into well-scoped workstreams; architecting and implementing safety-critical software, including FMEA, safety case, and NRTL certification; designing and implementing revenue-grade metering systems with data acquisition, signal processing, and calibration; partnering with electrical engineering on hardware-software co-design, board bring-up, and cross-boundary debugging; owning the secure firmware-update path including secure boot, code signing, and key management; and maintaining a modern CI/CD pipeline to scale systems from prototype to mass production.
In your first year, you might write design diagrams and safety cases for the IslandDER's safety-critical software and defend them to the NRTL; bring up firmware on a new board with the EE team using logic analyzers; stand up the code-signing pipeline for verified OTA updates; delegate well-scoped metering or comms workstreams with clean interfaces and review PRs; and tighten line-frequency control loops.
The role is based in the Philadelphia office with an in-person schedule of Tuesday–Thursday (three days per week) and approximately 10% travel. Remote candidates will be considered but must be able to travel to the Philadelphia office for at least one week per month, with overall travel expectations of approximately 25%.
**Requirements:**
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or Computer Science, with 7+ years in firmware engineering and a track record of shipping new products at scale
- Rigorous system design and documentation: exacting commitment to clear, thorough technical documentation and design diagrams; discipline to drive complex safety certification (e.g., IEC 61508 / IEC 60730 / UL 1998) to completion
- Technical leadership: demonstrated ability to lead technical direction of a project, architect the approach, partition into workstreams for others, and ship code yourself
- Embedded mastery: expert in C, C++, and/or Rust with deep experience debugging embedded systems via oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and JTAG/SWD
- Deep bare-metal/RTOS firmware experience on modern 32-bit microcontrollers, including low-level architecture and multi-core memory optimization (ARM Cortex-M or similar)
- AI-assisted development with ownership: sophisticated use of AI coding agents paired with full ownership; ability to explain every significant decision shipped
- Bias for fast iteration and judgment to size effort to business value, with communication skills to explain complex requirements to diverse stakeholders
**Preferred Qualifications:**
- Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or Computer Science
- Prior experience taking safety-critical software through NRTL certification
- Matter/Thread device commissioning (SPAKE2+/PASE, setup-code or QR pairing)
- Protocols & build: I2C, UART, SPI, CAN/CAN-FD, and Ethernet; build systems (Make, CMake); test automation and CI/CD
- Embedded TCP/IP networking (e.g., lwIP); experience implementing WireGuard or similar secure tunnels on real-time embedded platforms
- Reverse-engineering CAN protocols or developing custom evaluation tools
- RTOS configuration and use for multi-threaded, timing-critical applications across metrology, safety, and communications
- Experience with PX5 or ThreadX
- Experience designing or operating a code-signing / PKI system for firmware (key custody, signing pipeline, secure boot verification, key rotation and revocation)
- Familiarity with relevant standards: UL 1741/IEEE 1547, UL 3141, UL 2900 (cybersecurity), and ANSI C12.1 (metering)
