Firmware Engineer

Samsara•Austin, TX

5d•$113,645 - $191,000

About The Position

Samsara builds a cloud-connected sensor platform that gathers near-real-time data from battery-powered wireless sensors, Linux-based IoT gateways, and internet-connected dashcams. As a Firmware Engineer, you will develop software deployed on millions of devices used by industrial and enterprise customers. The work spans hardware selection and platform bring-up, sensor integration, data collection and event detection, and structuring recorded data for efficient analysis across fleets and detailed insights into individual events. The role uses C on MCU-based platforms, Golang for embedded applications on Linux-based gateways and backend services, Google Protocol Buffers, and AWS technologies; experience with those specific technologies is not required. You will collaborate across hardware, product, firmware, cloud, mobile, and quality teams to deliver and improve products used in areas such as fleet management and industrial monitoring. The position is suited to an engineer who can work across hardware and software layers, iterate quickly with customer feedback, and contribute to the technical practices and quality of the team. The position offers an annual base salary range of $113,645–$191,000 USD, depending in part on location and job-related qualifications. It is also eligible for an initial RSU grant with no vesting cliff and ongoing performance-tied refresh opportunities, subject to plan terms. Samsara describes its total rewards as including base salary, performance-based bonus or variable pay, and equity for eligible roles. Additional offerings include a professional development stipend, comprehensive health and parental leave plans, and a flexible, employee-led remote work model. Work may be remote, hybrid, or in-office depending on operational requirements and any location requirements specified for the role.

Requirements

At least 2 years of experience building firmware for resource-constrained systems in products shipped to customers and used in the field.
Fluency in C, including understanding compiler behavior and interpreting linker maps, stack traces, and memory corruption issues.
Solid bare-metal and RTOS experience, such as Zephyr, FreeRTOS, or equivalent, including scheduling, memory, timing, mutexes, and semaphores.
Experience bringing up new boards and debugging unproven hardware in collaboration with electrical engineers.
Fluency with low-level interfaces including SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, and ADC, and ability to debug hardware-software interactions.
Practical experience using bench equipment such as oscilloscopes, network analyzers, or RF spectrum analyzers to investigate problems.
Experience contributing to cross-team work spanning hardware, firmware, cloud, and quality from concept to product shipment; ability to work effectively across teams and build consensus.
Ability to assess how low-level driver decisions affect customer experience across system layers.
Ability to produce useful design documentation, review comments, and post-mortems.
Ability to iterate quickly on customer feedback while maintaining quality through automated testing and maintainable code.
Uses AI as part of everyday work to increase output without compromising quality.

Nice To Haves

In-depth BLE knowledge, including PHY-level understanding and development of performant, power-efficient system orchestration.
Cellular IoT experience with LTE-M or NB-IoT modem integration, power-state management, and FCC, PTCRB, or carrier certification.
End-to-end embedded systems security experience, including secure boot, firmware signing, cryptography, and key management for manufacturing.
Fleet-scale OTA and device firmware update experience, including A/B partitions and rollback strategies that avoid bricking inaccessible devices.
Embedded Linux experience on gateways, including Yocto or Buildroot, kernel drivers, and device trees.
CAN and J1939 experience on commercial vehicles, including reverse-engineering data-bus parameters across vehicle makes and models.
Python and Bash tooling experience and hardware-in-the-loop test automation.
Experience with electronics mass-production and quality-assurance processes, including resolving production showstoppers.

Responsibilities

Participate in hardware reviews and help select SoCs, memory, flash, and sensor configurations; validate choices using prototypes.
Bring up new boards and hardware platforms, configuring I/O and interfaces such as SPI, I2C, UART, and BLE, debugging system initialization, and validating designs.
Build and maintain peripheral drivers, secure bootloaders, device firmware updates, and core device management layers for power and connectivity.
Design protocols and hardware-management approaches that improve battery life in sensors and gateways.
Collaborate with product, full-stack, mobile, quality, and other engineering teams to ensure firmware data reaches users intact and usefully.
Contribute to engineering designs, reviews, and practices that support high standards, urgency, iterative delivery, and global scale.
Work across hardware, firmware, cloud, and quality from concept through shipped product, building consensus across teams.
Document engineering work through design documents, review comments, and post-mortems.
Iterate quickly on customer feedback while supporting quality through automated testing.

Benefits

Initial RSU grant with no vesting cliff and ongoing refresh opportunities tied to performance, subject to plan terms and conditions.
Base salary, performance-based bonus or variable pay, and equity for eligible roles.
Professional development stipend.
Comprehensive health plans.
Parental leave plans.
Flexible, employee-led remote work model.

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