Sr. Director, Embedded Engineering

NRG•VIRTUAL, WA

11d•$228,880 - $377,640•Onsite

About The Position

Vivint Smart Home, an NRG owned company, is a leading smart home company in the United States, dedicated to redefining the home experience with intelligent products and services. We find purpose in proactively protecting and keeping our customers connected to home, no matter where they are. Join the Smart Home team to create smarter, safer and more sustainable homes. Vivint is seeking a Senior Director of Embedded Engineering to lead the teams that build the software powering every Vivint device in the home — from security cameras and video doorbells to smart home hubs, network devices, and sensors. Reporting to the SVP of Engineering, this leader owns firmware, embedded Linux, OS and runtime platforms, and the full connectivity and protocol stack that ties our device portfolio together in the Vivint smart home ecosystem.

Requirements

10+ years of embedded software engineering experience, with 5+ years in engineering leadership roles.
Deep expertise in camera and video systems, including image signal processing and video encoding pipelines.
Strong understanding of AI and computer vision requirements — edge inference constraints, model optimization tradeoffs, and hardware platform considerations — sufficient to drive platform decisions.
Hands-on experience with firmware development (bare-metal and/or RTOS) and embedded Linux.
Experience managing or closely collaborating on hardware bring-up, BSP development, and JDM/contract manufacturer relationships.
Proven ability to define and execute multi-year embedded platform roadmaps in a consumer or commercial device company.
B.S. in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
Some travel required.

Nice To Haves

Experience in the smart home or connected-device industry.
Familiarity with imaging and video pipeline technologies (GStreamer, H.264/H.265, WebRTC, RTSP, HLS) and connectivity stacks (Z-Wave, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, BLE, Matter, MQTT).
Familiarity with camera SoC platforms.
Hands-on experience integrating or deploying AI/ML models on embedded devices.
Experience with Yocto or similar embedded Linux build systems.
Experience with OpenWrt or similar for network device platforms.

Responsibilities

Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing organization of firmware and embedded Linux engineers across multiple device teams.
Build a team culture rooted in engineering excellence, reliability, and customer impact.
Define career paths, set performance expectations, and invest in the growth of every engineer.
Partner with recruiting to attract top embedded engineering talent.
Own the multi-year technical roadmap for Vivint's embedded software platform — spanning firmware, embedded Linux, OS/runtime, imaging and video pipelines, and connectivity stacks.
Set architectural standards that support scalability, security, and maintainability across a diverse and growing device portfolio.
Drive modern embedded development practices: CI/CD for software, automated testing, and reliable OTA update infrastructure at fleet scale.
Partner with Hardware Engineering on new product introductions: co-design system architectures, evaluate SoCs and image sensors, and drive hardware-software integration from concept through mass production.
Serve as the embedded software owner in shared-responsibility engagements with JDM and silicon vendors, including chipset evaluation for compute, video, and networking.
Work with Backend Engineering to define clean device-to-cloud interfaces, remote device management, and real-time data flows.
Set and enforce standards for firmware quality, stability, and security — including secure boot, code signing, and secure OTA update processes.
Drive down field defect rates through rigorous pre-production testing, staged rollout practices, and post-launch fleet health monitoring.