Principal Embedded Software Engineer

Location:

San Francisco, CA (Sunset District)

Setting: 100% On-site (5 days/week)

Compensation: $170,000 – $260,000 + Equity

Company Stage:
Series B / $140M+ Funding

They are a fast-growing energy tech startup building the power electronics infrastructure required for the 21st-century grid. With $140M in funding, they are debottlenecking global electricity generation by creating scalable, software-integrated hardware solutions for the sustainable energy transition.

They are looking for a Principal Engineer to own the technical vision and architecture of our embedded firmware platform. This is a critical leadership hire. You will be the person who takes a high-potential prototype and transforms it into a rock-solid, production-ready system capable of powering global energy deployments.

• Architecture Ownership:
  Define and own the long-term roadmap for our embedded platform, covering RTOS, HAL, bootloaders, telemetry pipelines, and core device infrastructure.
• From Prototype to Production:
  Conduct independent assessments of existing platforms to transition hardware from engineering prototypes to field‑hardened.
• Technical Leadership:
  Direct the work of a team of embedded engineers, establishing coding standards, architectural best practices, and driving rigorous design reviews.
• Fleet Management:
  Build and own robust Over-the-Air (OTA) firmware upgrade systems and remote management tooling for a massive fleet of connected power electronics.
• Systems Thinking:
  Act as the primary technical escalation point, solving complex integration issues that span from low-level silicon to full product architecture.

• Expert-Level C/C++: 8+ years of hands‑on experience in bare-metal or near-bare-metal programming.
• Architecture Pedigree: A proven track record of architecting full firmware platforms across multiple shipped commercial products.
• Real‑World Fleet
  
  Experience:
  
  Experience managing connected devices in the field, including fault‑tolerant recovery mechanisms and secure boot.
• Modern RTOS Expertise:
  Deep familiarity with FreeRTOS, Zephyr, or similar embedded operating systems.
• Hardware Fluency:
  Comfortable with PWM, ADC, SPI, CAN, and using logic analyzers/

Embedded C/C++ FreeRTOS / Zephyr Bootloaders CAN / SPI / ADC / PWM OTA Updates