Firmware Engineer - Dexterous Hand Systems (human)

The Humanoid Hand packs dozens of actuated finger and palm drive stages into a form factor that must be safe, precise, and responsive at human-scale speeds. As Firmware Engineer for Dexterous Hand Systems, your mission is to build and own the embedded firmware stack that makes this possible - from the motor control loops running on Infineon TLE9879 drivers, through the RTOS HAL layer and Qualcomm IQ-series bring-up, to the communication stack that connects the hand to the rest of the robot in real time.

This is a deeply technical, hands-on role. You will work in close collaboration with the Electronics and Control engineer to close the firmware-controls loop on real hardware, define and implement communication protocols that meet deterministic timing requirements, and architect safety monitoring targeting ASIL-B compliance. The hand is a new product - many of the hardest problems do not have established answers yet, and your engineering judgment will directly shape the architecture.

• Develop and maintain field-oriented control (FOC) firmware for BLDC actuators across all finger and palm drive stages - tuning and debugging on real hardware, not library integration
• Architect and own the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) on RTOS (e.g. Zephyr) and Linux Kernel targets, including full Qualcomm IQ-series SOM bring-up
• Define and implement the full communication stack: FastDDS and Micro-XRCE-DDS for ROS 2 integration, TSN (IEEE 802.1AS/Qbv) for deterministic Ethernet, CAN, SPI, and I²C for local device buses
• Implement multi-level watchdog and safety monitoring architecture targeting ASIL-B compliance
• Collaborate with the Electronics team on hardware bring-up and motor driver integration (Infineon TLE9879); collaborate with the Control engineer to ensure the firmware layer meets the timing and observability requirements of the torque and impedance control loops running above it

• Embedded firmware and real-time systems

• 5+ years of embedded firmware development in real-time systems - RTOS experience is mandatory; Zephyr RTOS experience is strongly preferred
• Deep FOC implementation experience: you have tuned and debugged field-oriented control on real BLDC actuators, not just configured a library; you understand current loop bandwidth, back-EMF compensation, and commutation timing at the implementation level
• Linux Kernel driver development: device tree authoring, custom driver implementation, and low-level peripheral bring-up (SPI, I²C, CAN)
• Hands-on DDS middleware experience in embedded or edge contexts: FastDDS, Micro-XRCE-DDS, or equivalent in a resource-constrained environment

• Communication and safety

• Practical experience implementing deterministic communication stacks: TSN (IEEE 802.1AS/Qbv), CAN bus protocol stack, or equivalent in a latency-critical embedded system
• Functional safety experience (ISO 13849 or IEC 61508) - particularly watchdog architectures and safe-state design for actuated systems; ASIL-B or SIL 2 level experience is a strong plus

• Nice to have

• Qualcomm IQ platform (or similar) BSP and bring-up experience
• Infineon TLE9879 or similar integrated motor driver bring-up and configuration
• Experience developing firmware for tendon-driven or BLDC-actuated robotic hand or finger mechanisms
• Contributions to open-source RTOS or embedded middleware projects (Zephyr, NuttX, or similar)