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AIM Intelligent Machines builds autonomous heavy equipment and robotics that replace manual earthmoving work on jobsites worldwide. The company fuses software, hardware, and mission-critical infrastructure into ruggedized, safety-critical machinery operating under real-world constraints.
As a Senior Firmware Engineer, you will design and build core firmware systems powering AIM's Generation 2 hardware platform and global fleet operations. Your responsibilities include:
**Architecture & System Design**: Design and implement firmware for Generation 2 hardware using C++. Develop low-level drivers, hardware abstraction layers (HAL), and system services. Build robust interfaces to sensors, actuators, ECUs, and communication buses (CAN, SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet). Ensure deterministic behavior across real-time and near-real-time control paths.
**Production-Ready Firmware**: Write clean, efficient, testable embedded C++ code with robust error handling, watchdogs, and fail-safe mechanisms. Build firmware resilient to hardware faults, communication loss, and environmental variability. Contribute to firmware standards, architecture, and coding practices.
**System Reliability & Observability**: Design telemetry, logging, and debugging capabilities for embedded systems. Diagnose complex issues across firmware, hardware, and system integration boundaries. Drive root-cause analysis and eliminate recurring field failures.
**Hardware Bring-Up & Integration**: Lead firmware bring-up for new hardware (Gen2 boards, daughterboards, interposers). Work closely with Electrical and Mechanical Engineering to validate designs. Support HIL testing, regression testing, and field validation.
**Performance & Real-Time Behavior**: Optimize timing, memory usage, and CPU utilization. Ensure real-time constraints are met for control and safety-critical paths. Balance performance with robustness and maintainability.
**Engineering Leadership**: Mentor engineers on embedded systems, firmware design, and debugging. Improve firmware development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and testing frameworks. Establish best practices for reliability, safety, and maintainability.
You will work on hard problems including real-time control loops, deterministic execution, reliable communication across multiple protocols, hardware variability, safety-critical systems with fail-safe behavior, and debugging in high-noise, high-vibration environments. You'll iterate quickly, confront failures directly, and build systems that work in dust, heat, vibration, and real customer operations.
**Requirements**: Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or equivalent hands-on experience. 5+ years of professional experience in firmware or embedded systems development. Strong C++ experience in embedded or systems programming environments. Experience developing firmware for microcontrollers or embedded Linux systems. Experience with hardware interfaces and communication protocols (CAN, SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet). Strong debugging skills across hardware/software boundaries. Experience designing systems for reliability, safety, and real-world deployment. Proven ability to deliver production-quality firmware in cross-functional environments.
**Preferred Qualifications**: Experience with safety-critical systems or real-time embedded systems. Experience with robotics, autonomy, or heavy equipment systems. Familiarity with RTOS or real-time scheduling concepts. Experience with hardware bring-up and board-level debugging. Experience with firmware update mechanisms (OTA, bootloaders, secure updates). Experience with observability in embedded systems (logging, tracing, telemetry). Familiarity with HIL testing, validation frameworks, or hardware test automation. Experience working in high-reliability or high-entropy environments.
