Software Engineering Manager

Embedded Software Manager

Bird is recognized as the expert in RF communications, measurement and management providing innovative RF products, systems, services and educational solutions to the wireless industry. Our employees enjoy working for a privately owned manufacturing business where their contributions make a great impact. Bird offers a competitive wage/benefit package, including medical/dental/vision, basic life, short term and long term disability, paid parental leave, 401K, tuition assistance, and gainshare bonus.

This position is located in Solon, OH. It is primarily onsite with hybrid remote-30% remote/70% onsite.

Purpose Of Position:

Leads the people, technical work, and organizational relationships responsible for developing embedded software and firmware for RF measurement and instrumentation products. Our products combine technologies such as embedded firmware, real-time operating systems, embedded Linux, programmable logic, digital signal processing, networking, and hardware control. This role requires sufficient technical depth to guide architecture and engineering decisions, the people-leadership ability to build a capable and accountable team, and the organizational perspective to lead effectively across functional boundaries.

The manager will help the team translate product needs into sound architectures, clear requirements, disciplined implementation, effective verification, and reliable products that can be supported throughout their lifecycle.

The manager is expected to remain technically engaged but is not expected to be the team's deepest specialist in every technology or to serve as the primary implementer. Success depends on asking good questions, recognizing risk, drawing on the expertise of others, making sound decisions, and developing the team's ability to operate with accountability and increasing independence. Strong candidates may have developed these capabilities through different combinations of engineering, technical leadership, project leadership, and formal people management.

General Functions / Specific Responsibilities:

Technical Direction and Engineering Judgment

• Guide embedded software and firmware architecture for new products and major product revisions.

• Help translate product and system needs into clear, implementable, and testable software requirements, interfaces, and acceptance criteria.

• Work with domain experts to allocate functionality appropriately across processors, programmable logic, hardware, firmware, and application software.

• Promote maintainable software structures, stable interfaces, well-understood data flows and state behavior, and effective error-handling and recovery strategies.

• Lead or facilitate technical trade studies and design reviews involving performance, timing, communications, memory, power, security, testability, and maintainability.

• Ensure important technical decisions, assumptions, risks, and tradeoffs are supported by appropriate analysis, prototyping, measurement, or other objective evidence.

• Establish development and verification practices appropriate to the product risk, including design and code review, configuration management, reproducible builds, progressive integration, regression testing, release control, and structured defect investigation.

• Encourage purposeful experimentation to answer defined technical questions and use the results to improve requirements, architecture, plans, and decisions.

• Identify technical risks early and establish practical plans to reduce or retire them.

People and Team Leadership

• Recruit, retain, coach, and develop embedded-software and firmware engineers.

• Establish clear expectations for technical quality, ownership, documentation, communication, collaboration, and execution.

• Provide timely, candid, and constructive feedback, recognize strong performance, and address performance concerns fairly and directly.

• Delegate meaningful ownership while providing the direction, context, and support engineers need to succeed.

• Assign work with consideration for technical needs, project priorities, employee capabilities, workload, and development goals.

• Develop engineers'…