Firmware Engineering Manager (Products & Systems)

Zero Motorcycles Inc.•Scotts Valley, CA

29d•Onsite

About The Position

The Product Experience (P.Ex) organization is responsible for how the motorcycle feels to use. We design and build the firmware that runs on the bike, the dash the rider sees, the mobile app they carry, the diagnostic tools used in the field, and the cloud systems that connect them. The Firmware Products team, within the P.Ex org, is responsible for delivering the behavior of the motorcycle itself. The team spans firmware development, battery performance engineering, and test engineering, owning the full value chain from firmware requirements to field validation. Every safety decision, performance characteristic, and response the bike makes to the rider runs through this system. We are looking for a leader who can learn alongside the team and mentor them to learn continuously without disrupting the care they have for each other. We are building a system where we can quickly and reliably understand how what we ship behaves in the real world, and use that to make better product decisions. This goes beyond processes or frameworks. In practice, it looks like: A change is made and within hours we can see how it affected real riders, not just whether tests passed. When something goes wrong, we can reconstruct what the rider experienced, how the system responded, and which interactions or changes led to it. We reduce the time between making a change and understanding its impact, without increasing risk. What we learn from real-world behavior directly changes what we build next. We use that learning to decide what not to build, what to simplify, and where to focus next. If answering these depends on meetings, reports, or interpretation, the system is not giving us the feedback we need.

Requirements

10-15 years of embedded development experience
At least 3-5 years leading a multi-discipline team
Grown engineers who were not ready for the next level and got them there
Given feedback that was hard to hear, in a way that strengthened the relationship
Managed across locations and found ways to make distance irrelevant to the quality of someone's experience on the team
Made prioritization calls that are right in the long term, even when unpopular, and explain them clearly
Worked in environments where the temptation to build more was constant, and developed the discipline to build less, better
Deep experience shipping multithreaded, real-time embedded firmware in C / C++
Proficient debugging embedded systems at the bench
Read schematics and datasheets
Comfortable with UARTs, JTAG, and oscilloscopes
Moved teams toward smaller batches in constrained environments and made a measurable difference
Shipped in safety-critical systems and improved CI/CD to move faster without compromising integrity
Worked effectively with technical experts to move decisions forward without needing to win every argument
Navigated competing priorities across teams without creating turf wars or waiting for someone above you to resolve the tension
Use AI tools daily to think through hard problems, well beyond basic usage
Driven adoption and apply sound judgment on where AI can and cannot be trusted in safety-critical systems

Nice To Haves

Hunger to close gaps and self-awareness to know where they are

Responsibilities

Lead the Firmware Products team end to end, leading 8-12 engineers across firmware development, battery performance, and test, spread across Scotts Valley, Netherlands, and India.
Decide what problems need to be solved next, and work with the Firmware, BMS, and Vehicle Architects to ensure they are framed and addressed well.
Care deeply about the people on the team and invest in their growth as engineers, system thinkers, and craftspeople.
Understand what each person on the team is working toward and what is getting in their way, and act on it continuously.
Give direct, specific feedback and create the conditions for a team that improves how it works and becomes self-organizing over time.
Think about what riders need from firmware before thinking about what the team should build.
Translate user and business needs into small, testable work.
Keep the backlog honest by saying no to what does not move the product forward, and do not let closing tickets masquerade as solving problems.
Get in the trenches with Firmware, BMS, and Vehicle Architects to create the conditions for strong work, clear priorities, protected focus, and problems framed well enough to be worth solving.
Write, review, debug, and critique with enough technical depth that architects trust you with their hardest problems and decisions.
Own and improve the system from idea to field so the team learns faster without increasing fragility.
Keep batches small, integration continuous, and validation part of building, and surface risk early enough for the team to act on it.
Be accountable for firmware behavior across real riders, environments, and failure modes, and ensure the system captures what is needed to understand it.
Build feedback loops from field behavior into planning so the team learns from usage and not just incidents.
Review hardware, vendor firmware, and system decisions, and ensure firmware behavior stays coherent from component to customer experience.
Work with CX, PMO, and leadership to ensure releases reach customers smoothly, field feedback shapes priorities, and commitments reflect technical reality and surface risk early.
Represent the team's work to the exec team and marketing in terms that shape decisions, not just inform them.
Use AI tools fluently and daily, with tools like Claude Code as a starting point, and push well into using AI as a genuine thought partner in architecture, debugging, prioritization, and technical decision-making.
Drive AI adoption across the team and upward, using it to unlock higher performance and advocating for tools and capabilities the team needs.