Sr. Manager - Hardware and Firmware Engineering

Description

Austin, TX On-site, Monday-Friday

As Sr Manager
- Firmware and Hardware Engineering, you'll provide unified technical leadership across firmware, electronics, and mechanical engineering for a small, senior team building rugged, field-deployed embedded systems. You'll be the integration point between disciplines - setting the firmware architecture and system-level design standards, catching issues on the bench before they reach the field, and driving AI-first practices into how the team designs, tests, and documents its work.

This is a player-coach role: you'll balance strategic, system-level leadership with hands-on technical direction, without becoming the critical path yourself.

• Provide strategic leadership across firmware, electronics, and mechanical engineering so the team ships one integrated customer-facing system - not three disciplines that only come together at the end
• Champion an AI-first design framework across hardware, firmware, and mechanical work, embedding AI into how the team designs, reviews, and documents
• Set and hold the firmware standard - architecture, coding practice, and field-release hygiene - while staying electronics-literate and mechanically fluent enough to direct schematic, bring-up, packaging, DFM, and contract-manufacturer decisions as system decisions
• Require co-design and early system validation across disciplines, catching issues on the bench/HIL while designs can still change
• Oversee execution of firmware, electronics, and mechanical programs from concept through production and field performance, as a player-coach rather than the critical-path implementer
• Foster system-level ownership, holding engineers accountable for how their work performs in the finished product, not just their own discipline's output
• Establish and monitor KPIs for schedule, quality, field issues, and firmware release health
• Make and document the system-level trade-off calls between firmware, electronics, and mechanical work, guided by customer outcomes like accuracy, battery life, survivability, and installability
• Enable your senior Firmware Test Automation engineer to own embedded test architecture (HIL, automation, CI) as a first-class system used from early bring-up onward
• Oversee resource allocation, priorities, and budget across firmware, electronics, and mechanical work, including lab/HIL needs, contractors, and manufacturing partners
• Maintain living system documentation - pin maps, power/thermal budgets, antenna/mechanical keep-outs, and test interfaces - visible across all disciplines
• Lead a small multi-disciplinary engineering team spanning firmware, electronics, and mechanical, including a senior Firmware Test Automation engineer
• Grow firmware and system capability through hiring, mentoring, and a high review bar; coach engineers across all disciplines to think and validate at the system level
• Own high-severity field issues as system-level problems, driving root cause analysis that closes the loop into design and earlier system-level testing
• Partner with Product to champion technician- and user-centered design decisions
• Model AI proficiency personally and drive team-wide adoption, measured by cycle time and defect outcomes rather than tool count
• You'll also invest in your own growth - staying current with embedded systems, HIL/system-validation practice, and AI-assisted design review, and building relationships across the broader engineering community.

• A bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field - or an equivalent combination of education and demonstrated embedded-product experience
• 10+ years developing…