Staff Firmware Engineer

Watney • San Francisco, CA

3h

About The Position

Watney builds and deploys autonomous robotic systems to address labor shortages, hazardous working conditions, and operational complexity in critical infrastructure, beginning with data centers. Firmware engineers develop firmware for robot mainboards and actuators and bring up new boards with manufacturing partners, collaborating with mechanical, electrical, and machine learning teams as new sensors and embodiments are introduced. This role helps determine how robots can recover from board faults without human intervention and how firmware designs can carry across boards and embodiments. The firmware and architecture decisions directly affect the reliability and safety of Watney’s robots.

Requirements

• Have shipped production firmware to millions of devices.
• Have written production firmware in Rust, C, or both.
• Have debugged communication buses on real hardware.
• Have built or operated hardware-in-the-loop test infrastructure.
• Have worked with contract manufacturers or OEMs to turn ambiguous requirements into a board layout.
• Have working knowledge of electrical engineering and either field-oriented control or RF.

Nice To Haves

• Have worked with electromechanical systems or cameras and optics, electrically, mechanically, or in software.

Responsibilities

• Lead board bring-up with manufacturing partners, from specification discovery through first boot.
• Write drivers and hardware abstraction layers for microcontrollers and actuators.
• Build and run automated hardware-in-the-loop tests across embodiments.
• Build a common firmware base for mainboards and actuators in Rust and C.
• Work with machine learning and mechanical teams to prototype and validate new sensors.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed