Sr. R&D Firmware Engineer

Whisker is redefining what it means to live with cats-designing intelligent systems that remove friction, elevate the everyday, and celebrate the quiet brilliance of feline companionship. Today, Litter-Robot leads the category. Tomorrow, an entire ecosystem that expands what's possible for cats and the people who love them. We believe the future is feline. And we're imagining that future today.

We work onsite 4+ days a week, with our team based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and Juneau, Wisconsin. Our team of 600+ passionate pet people thrives on collaboration, innovation, and the occasional office cameo from a four-legged friend.

What You'll Do:

The Firmware Engineer role in Innovation Engineering (R&D) focuses on the early-stage embedded development of advanced motor control and robotic subsystems for Whisker's next-generation smart pet products. The position requires technical depth, rapid experimentation, and system-level problem-solving to design, prototype, and validate high-performance electromechanical systems and translate ambiguous concepts into robust proof-of-concept implementations.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

This list of duties and responsibilities is not all-inclusive and may be expanded to include other duties and responsibilities as deemed necessary.

• Architects and implements technical solutions on embedded systems to support IoT smart pet products
• Works closely with AWS cloud engineering team on solutions for data management
• Manages code release process for embedded team
• Conducts code reviews across multiple teams
• Conducts integration and system-level testing
• Programs, solves, and debugs with detailed knowledge in machine control and multi-threaded / multi-core programming environments, software applications, and device layering programs
• Provides information by collecting, analyzing, and summarizing development issues
• Documents and demonstrates solutions by developing documentation, flowcharts, layouts, diagrams, charts, code comments and clear code
• Stays up to date with state-of-the-art development tools, programming techniques, and computing equipment by participating in educational opportunities, reading professional publications, maintaining personal networks and participating in professional organizations
• Will perform additional responsibilities when required

Requirements

What You'll Bring:

• BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of Embedded Systems Experience
• Solid understanding of:
  • C/C++, Bare Metal, FreeRTOS (or similar)
  • Microcontroller and sensor HW selection
  • Low-level and device driver development
  • PWM, UART, I2C, SPI, SDIO, MIPI, USB, BLE, and Wi Fi
  • AWS IoT Device SDK (or similar) and MQTT protocol
  • JTAG / ICE
• Applied knowledge of control theory, including PID loop tuning, motor control (stepper/BLDC), and closed-loop systems
• Experience with rapid prototyping platforms, SBCs, and robotics systems (e.g., Arduino, Raspberry Pi, VEX)
  Experience with Test Driven Development methodology
• Experience with version control tools such as Bit Bucket, etc.
• Experience with power supplies, meters, oscilloscopes, signal generators, etc.
• Experience with ST and Espressif MCUs and their respective development ecosystems
• Experience with successfully taking products to market
• Maintains confidentiality of proprietary information
• Ability to maintain a professional atmosphere in a fast-paced environment with numerous interactions and interruptions
• A high degree of initiative, self-motivation, and ability to motivate others
• Ability to establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with colleagues
• Comfortable with office pets (cats, dogs)

Not Required but Nice to Have!

• Experience developing electronic subsystems and board-level designs
• Experience with Embedded Linux (Yocto or similar)
• Experience with Boot loader development
• Experience with implementing OTA functionality
• Basic understanding of mechanical systems
• Experience conceptualizing, developing, and deploying Machine Learning (ML) and Computer Vision (CV) models from scratch
• Proficiency in Python and standard Data Science methodologies
• Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks and CV platforms (e.g., Tensor Flow, Keras, PyTorch, YOLO, and Roboflow)
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and database querying (SQL) to access, pipeline, and analyze large-scale telemetry data

Benefits & Purrks:

Join a tenacious, inventive company that empowers team members to chart their own path, lead by grounding decisions in the "why", and has a strong sense of empathy and openness to new perspectives. Be a part of exciting growth, work with incredible people, and create tomorrow's pet products-plus a whole lot of extras. You will also be provided with:

• Premium Medical/Dental/Vision insurance
• Paid parental leave
• Whisker Parents Program
• 1 day "pawternity" leave for new pet adoption
• Pet Insurance Discount
• 401K match
• Flexible spending accounts
• Company-paid short-term disability and life insurance
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Generous paid time off
• 14…