R&D Firmware Engineer

Whisker•Auburn Hills, MI

8d•Onsite

About The Position

Whisker is redefining what it means to live with cats—designing intelligent systems that remove friction, elevate the everyday, and celebrate the quiet brilliance of feline companionship. Today, Litter-Robot leads the category. Tomorrow, an entire ecosystem that expands what’s possible for cats and the people who love them. We believe the future is feline. And we’re imagining that future today. We work onsite 4+ days a week, with our team based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and Juneau, Wisconsin. Our team of 600+ passionate pet people thrives on collaboration, innovation, and the occasional office cameo from a four-legged friend. What You’ll Do: The Firmware Engineer role in Innovation Engineering (R&D) focuses on the early-stage embedded development of advanced motor control and robotic subsystems for Whisker's next-generation smart pet products. The position requires technical depth, rapid experimentation, and system-level problem-solving to design, prototype, and validate high-performance electromechanical systems and translate ambiguous concepts into robust proof-of-concept implementations.

Requirements

BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
5+ years of Embedded Systems Experience
Solid understanding of:
C/C++, Bare Metal, FreeRTOS (or similar)
Microcontroller and sensor HW selection
Low-level and device driver development
PWM, UART, I2C, SPI, SDIO, MIPI, USB, BLE, and WiFi
AWS IoT Device SDK (or similar) and MQTT protocol
JTAG / ICE
Applied knowledge of control theory, including PID loop tuning, motor control (stepper/BLDC), and closed-loop systems
Experience with rapid prototyping platforms, SBCs, and robotics systems (e.g., Arduino, Raspberry Pi, VEX)
Experience with Test Driven Development methodology
Experience with version control tools such as BitBucket, etc.
Experience with power supplies, meters, oscilloscopes, signal generators, etc.
Experience with ST and Espressif MCUs and their respective development ecosystems
Experience with successfully taking products to market
Maintains confidentiality of proprietary information
Ability to maintain a professional atmosphere in a fast-paced environment with numerous interactions and interruptions
A high degree of initiative, self-motivation, and ability to motivate others
Ability to establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with colleagues
Comfortable with office pets (cats, dogs)

Nice To Haves

Experience developing electronic subsystems and board-level designs
Experience with Embedded Linux (Yocto or similar)
Experience with Bootloader development
Experience with implementing OTA functionality
Basic understanding of mechanical systems
Experience conceptualizing, developing, and deploying Machine Learning (ML) and Computer Vision (CV) models from scratch
Proficiency in Python and standard Data Science methodologies
Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks and CV platforms (e.g., TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, YOLO, and Roboflow)
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and database querying (SQL) to access, pipeline, and analyze large-scale telemetry data

Responsibilities

Architects and implements technical solutions on embedded systems to support IoT smart pet products
Works closely with AWS cloud engineering team on solutions for data management
Manages code release process for embedded team
Conducts code reviews across multiple teams
Conducts integration and system-level testing
Programs, solves, and debugs with detailed knowledge in machine control and multi-threaded / multi-core programming environments, software applications, and device layering programs
Provides information by collecting, analyzing, and summarizing development issues
Documents and demonstrates solutions by developing documentation, flowcharts, layouts, diagrams, charts, code comments and clear code
Stays up to date with state-of-the-art development tools, programming techniques, and computing equipment by participating in educational opportunities, reading professional publications, maintaining personal networks and participating in professional organizations
Will perform additional responsibilities when required