01Owns
Firmware architecture
Decides how tasks, interrupts and shared state are organised, whether an RTOS is needed, and how hardware-specific code is kept separate from application logic.
Hire · Embedded and firmware
Hire Embedded Systems Developers
Senior embedded systems developers who join your hardware team to write firmware that runs for years on constrained microcontrollers. Shortlisted developers have debugged a timing fault on a development board, written a peripheral driver from a datasheet and planned a firmware update that cannot brick a device in the field.
Paid exercise on real development hardware
Senior and lead firmware engineers only
Works with your electronics and app teams
On your team
What an embedded systems developer owns on your team.
02Owns
Peripheral drivers
Writes and maintains drivers for sensors, radios, displays and storage over I2C, SPI, UART and CAN, working directly from datasheets and errata.
03Owns
Power budget
Measures current draw in each state, uses sleep modes and wake sources carefully, and keeps battery life estimates honest as features are added.
04Owns
Field updates
Owns the bootloader and over-the-air update path, including signed images, A/B slots and recovery when power fails halfway through a write.
05Owns
Bring-up with hardware
Works with electronics engineers on new board revisions, confirms pin assignments and clock trees, and reports layout problems found during testing.
Vetting
Skills we test before an embedded systems developer joins.
01Tested
Embedded C and C++
Writes predictable code without dynamic allocation surprises, understands volatile, memory alignment and undefined behaviour, and follows a coding standard such as MISRA where required.
02Tested
Real-time operating systems
Uses FreeRTOS or Zephyr sensibly, sets task priorities deliberately and recognises priority inversion, stack overflow and deadlock risks.
03Tested
Microcontroller families
Hands-on experience with ARM Cortex-M parts from vendors such as ST, Nordic or NXP, and comfort reading reference manuals for unfamiliar ones.
04Tested
Debugging tools
JTAG and SWD debuggers, logic analysers and oscilloscopes, plus trace output that helps reproduce a fault seen only once in the field.
05Tested
Connectivity
Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, cellular or LoRa stacks, and the trade-offs between range, power and data rate for the product in question.
06Tested
Testing firmware
Unit tests on the host for logic, hardware-in-the-loop tests for drivers, and a CI build that produces reproducible signed images.
Work sample
How the embedded systems developer work sample runs.
- 01Step 1
Find the timing bug
The developer receives a development board running firmware that occasionally corrupts sensor readings, and must trace it to a race between an interrupt and a task.
- 02Step 2
Write a driver from a datasheet
Given the datasheet for an unfamiliar I2C sensor, they implement initialisation, a read routine and error handling for a missing acknowledgement.
- 03Step 3
Design a safe update
They outline a bootloader and update scheme that survives power loss at any point and rejects unsigned images. We pay for the hours involved.
- 04Step 4
Report to the hardware team
They write a short note to an electronics engineer explaining a suspected board-level issue, with the measurements that support it.
Levels
Embedded Systems Developers: what changes at each level.
01Level 1
Senior
Owns firmware for one device or subsystem, writes drivers and application tasks, and reviews colleagues’ embedded code.
02Level 2
Lead
Sets the firmware architecture and coding standard across products, chooses the RTOS and toolchain, and coordinates board bring-up with hardware engineers.
03Level 3
Embedded systems architect
Shapes platform decisions across a product line, such as microcontroller selection, security of the boot chain and how devices, gateways and cloud services divide the work.
Other options
When to hire someone other than an embedded systems developer.
01Consider
The device is mostly a Linux computer
If the product runs a full operating system and the work is application services on it, a backend developer may suit you better.
Open register02Consider
Your gap is the companion app
If firmware is stable and users struggle with the phone experience, hire on the app side instead.
Open register03Consider
You need fleet data, not firmware
If devices already send telemetry and nobody uses it, a data analyst will produce value sooner.
Open registerFirmware bugs are expensive once devices ship
A web bug can be fixed with a deploy. A firmware bug in devices already sitting in customers’ homes needs a working update path, and if that path itself is broken it may need a recall. That is why embedded hiring should weigh caution and testing habits as heavily as raw coding speed.
Ask candidates how they would roll out an update to a large fleet. Look for staged rollouts, health reporting from updated devices and a clear plan for stopping the rollout part way through.
Reading a datasheet is a core skill
Much embedded work starts with a component the developer has never used. Good candidates read the datasheet and errata before writing code, check timing diagrams and register reset values, and know that the example code from a vendor is a starting point rather than production quality. Watching someone work from an unfamiliar datasheet tells you more than a coding puzzle.
Picking the right level
A senior developer fits a team with an established architecture and a backlog of drivers and features. A lead makes sense for a new product, a new board revision or a team where every engineer structures firmware differently. An architect is for companies with several devices sharing code and security requirements across the range.
Setting up for a strong start
Send hardware, debuggers and access to schematics before day one, and pair the new hire with the electronics engineer for the first board session. Embedded developers lose more time to missing equipment than to unfamiliar code.
A good first task is to reproduce and fix a known field issue end to end, including the update that delivers the fix. It exercises the toolchain, the test rig and the release process in one go.
FAQ
Questions to resolve before the build.
01Do your embedded systems developers need our hardware to start?
They work best with at least one development kit or prototype board on their desk, plus a debugger. We plan the shipping of hardware as part of onboarding so the first week is not spent waiting.
02Can they work on safety-certified products?
Some candidates have worked under standards such as IEC 62304 for medical devices or ISO 26262 for automotive. If certification applies to your product, tell us early and we will only shortlist people with that history.
03Which microcontrollers and RTOSes do they know?
Most have shipped on ARM Cortex-M families with FreeRTOS or Zephyr, and some on bare metal or embedded Linux. We list each candidate’s chips and toolchains so you can compare them with your bill of materials.
Works alongside
Roles an embedded systems developer works best alongside.
01Pair with
Mobile app developers
When the device pairs with a phone app over Bluetooth and both sides must agree on a protocol and on how failures are handled.
Open register02Pair with
Cloud engineers
For device provisioning, telemetry ingestion and the services that schedule over-the-air updates across a fleet.
Open register03Pair with
Cybersecurity engineers
To review secure boot, key storage and update signing before devices ship to customers.
Open registerProduct delivery
Need the whole product built instead?
Primary sources
References behind this page
Dated official documentation, standards, and research that support the factual claims on this page.
- 01FreeRTOS documentation
Official documentation for the widely used open-source real-time kernel.
- 02Zephyr Project documentation
Official documentation for the Linux Foundation’s embedded RTOS.
How to read this page
Scope, cost and timeline figures are planning guidance until confirmed in a written proposal. Diagrams and screens are illustrations, not client deliverables, and source-code rights and handover follow the signed agreement. See the delivery process and the full disclaimer.
Next decision
Turn the brief into an accepted product scope.
Define outcomes, constraints, evidence, rights and handover before delivery begins.
Commercial rights, repositories, environments, documentation, acceptance and handover remain contract-defined.