Staff Firmware Engineer, Platform

ALSO • Palo Alto, CA

4d • Onsite

About The Position

We’re ALSO, an electric mobility company originally conceived as a part of Rivian. We’re a passionate team of builders, dreamers, doers and innovators, focused on creating entirely new (not to mention, innovative and delightful) vertically integrated, small EVs designed to meet the global mobility challenges of today and tomorrow. Our mission is to inspire everyone to ride ALSO—replacing many local car, truck and SUV miles with ones on vehicles that are more affordable, more enjoyable and 10-50x more efficient.
In this role, you will play a large role in platform-level firmware development, being a key contributor to the foundational software layers that enable all vehicle products—including drivers, real time operating system integration, and build infrastructure. You will own the end to end design, development, and test of critical embedded software and tooling that supports the full scope of ALSO’s products. You will also drive architectural decisions for the firmware platform and build systems, enabling teams to efficiently develop, test, and deploy firmware across the product portfolio.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in embedded software/firmware development, with demonstrated experience in platform, BSP, or infrastructure roles.
• MS in an engineering discipline, preferably Computer Science or Electrical Engineering.
• Strong driver development experience: I2C, SPI, UART, CAN, CAN-FD, GPIO, DMA, timers, ADC/DAC, and other MCU peripherals.
• Experience with real-time operating systems (FreeRTOS, Zephyr, ThreadX, or similar); understanding of scheduling, synchronization primitives, and memory management.
• Strong proficiency with Bazel or similar modern build systems (Buck, CMake); experience working with complex multi-target embedded builds.
• Expert-level proficiency in C/C++ with deep understanding of embedded constraints (memory, timing, power).
• Experience with toolchain management: GCC/LLVM for ARM, linker scripts, startup code, and debugging tools (JTAG/SWD, trace).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines for embedded development (build automation, static analysis, unit testing frameworks).
• Excellent communication skills with ability to document complex systems and support cross-functional teams.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with bootloader development, secure boot, and firmware update mechanisms (OTA).
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing and emulation frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of hardware abstraction layers, peripheral drivers, and board support packages across MCU families.
• Support RTOS configuration, integration, and optimization; drive decisions on OS selection, task architecture, and resource management.
• Design and Develop frameworks for core platform functions like telemetry generation, updating firmware, and health monitoring.
• Contribute to Bazel-based build infrastructure; ensure reproducible builds, efficient dependency management, and scalable build configurations across targets.
• Contribute to coding standards, driver interface design, and platform APIs; make informed architectural decisions on MCU selection, memory management, and peripheral allocation.
• Drive build and test infrastructure improvements; maintain toolchains, manage compiler/linker configurations, and ensure fast, reliable CI pipelines.
• Lead efforts on boot time optimization, memory footprint reduction, and runtime performance tuning across the platform.

Benefits

• Robust health coverage — excellent health, dental, and vision insurance covered up to 100% by ALSO, with FSA & HSA options
• One Medical membership and dedicated insurance advocate
• Rich fertility and family-building benefits with Progyny
• Flexible time off
• 401(k) match

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior