Software Engineer; Embedded & Application Development

This position is ideally on site in Mooresville, NC just north of Charlotte, NC.

This position will not sponsor H1B or TN VISA and is intended for US Citizen only

IST Precision Inc. is an advanced R&D engineering firm specializing in high-precision instrumentation, sensors, actuators, and diagnostics. For over 25 years, our team has provided engineering services focused on precision systems and automation equipment used across telecommunications, space, life science, automotive, and medical industries. With more than 30 engineers and technicians, IST integrates mechanical, electrical, and software expertise with in-house manufacturing and assembly to deliver turnkey systems from concept to commissioning.

We are seeking a Software Engineer (Embedded & Application Development) to join our growing team and contribute to next-generation precision systems — from molecular imaging and space-based data acquisition to advanced automation and inspection platforms. This role involves close collaboration with electronics, mechanical, and software teams to design, implement, and test both real-time embedded code and application-level software in a hands‑on, hardware‑driven environment.

Learn more about our software engineering capabilities and the types of systems we build:

• Develop and maintain firmware for ARM-based microcontrollers and AMD/Xilinx SoCs (Micro Blaze and Zynq).
• Implement embedded code for data acquisition, real-time control, and high-speed communication interfaces (SPI, I²C, UART, LVDS, SERDES).
• Develop and maintain Python-based GUIs and occasional web dashboards for system control and data visualization; C#/.NET experience is a plus.
• Design and implement a wide range of algorithms including digital filters (FIR/IIR), motion and laser control (PI/PID), phase locking for interferometry systems, timing synchronization, high speed communication protocols between third party hardware and image processing.
• Collaborate closely with a multidisciplinary engineering team — including electronics, mechanical, and software engineers — to design, integrate, and test complex embedded and application-level systems.
• Work under the guidance of a Principal Software Engineer on architecture, code reviews, dev ops and overall software direction.
• Contribute to bare metal, RTOS and embedded Linux application development on Zynq and similar ARM-based SoCs.
• Using AI‑based development tools (i.e. cursor, claude) to augment software development expertise and to streamline documentation, and testing with strong judgment on when how and how not to apply them.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with a focus on real‑time embedded systems.
• Proficiency in C and C++ for embedded systems.
• Professional experience designing multi‑threaded applications using real time operating systems, including performance analysis, memory analysis, and debugging of synchronization errors.
• Professional experience developing firmware for ARM-based microcontrollers implementing interrupts, DMA, GPIO and SPI or I2C to satisfy functional requirements.
• Experience decoding and encoding serial protocols for data transfer between processors and, or subsystems.
• Experience writing firmware to interface with peripherals based on schematic diagrams.
• Strong understanding of signal processing, control systems, and timing synchronization concepts.
• Extensive experience with hardware bring‑up using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and communication interfaces to verify and troubleshoot new hardware designs.
• Strong analytical, experimental, and problem‑solving skills.

• Experience with Python for application or GUI development.
• Experience assisting hardware engineers with MCU and peripheral components selection.
• Experience with AMD/Xilinx FPGA platforms (Micro Blaze or Zynq) and integration between embedded processors and FPGA logic.
• Familiarity with digital filter design, control algorithms, or image/data processing pipelines.
• Experience developing on embedded Linux systems or using…