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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Senior Firmware Engineer - **Company:** HIGHLAND DIVERSIFIED, INC. - **Location:** Newark, CA, United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Board Bringup, Artificial Intelligence, ARM Architecture, C++ (Programming Language), Software Debugging, Linux on Embedded Systems, Firmware, Protocol Buffers, Hardware Design, Hardware Interface Design, Joint Test Action (IEEE Standards), Motion Planning, Non-Volatile Memory, Real-Time Operating Systems, RS-485 Standard, Sensor Fusion, Software Engineering, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter, Data Logging, Serial Peripheral Interface, PIC Microcontroller, Control Structures, Safety Critical Systems, State Machines, Bare Metal - **Published:** November 2, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.careerbuilder.com/job-details/senior-firmware-engineer-newark-ca--4ba3ece9-144d-4eea-bb07-0431ead8cc20 ## About the Role Computer Firmware, Pharmacy, Wholesale Industry, Prescription Filling, Robotics, Ubiquity, Patient Safety, Computer Firmware, Microcontroller, Realtime Operating System, * Power electronics / gate-driver debugging. * Jetson / embedded Linux adjacency. * Robotics: sensor fusion, motion planning, control theory. * Healthcare or other regulated / audited industry experience. ## Description You own the firmware that physically moves the medication. This is the bare-metal / RTOS software on the motor-control microcontroller inside the robot - the layer below the edge agent, where a command becomes motion, a sensor becomes a decision, and a safety interlock is the difference between the right dose and a patient-safety event. You own the firmware side of the PreScript interface - the wire protocol the edge agent (Rust, on Jetson-class hardware) uses to drive the dispense mechanism - and everything below it: motor control loops, sensor acquisition and cross-checking, timing-critical actuation, and the on-device safety gates that make an unsafe dispense structurally impossible rather than merely unlikely. You work directly with Josh (CTO) on the motor-control and hardware interface, and report to the Head of Software Engineering on architecture and cross-boundary integration with the edge agent. What You'll Own * Motor control - Closed-loop actuation of the dispensing mechanism: PWM/DMA drive, current sensing, stall detection, and the timing budgets that keep motion precise and safe. * The PreScript firmware interface - The firmware side of the wire protocol with the edge agent. You own the contract, the framing, and the failure behavior when the link drops mid-dispense. * Sensor acquisition & cross-check - Read, filter, and independently cross-check the signals that confirm a dispense happened correctly. No critical signal is trusted on a single source. * On-firmware safety - Interlocks and state machines that fail closed: the code path to actuate does not exist without confirmed, verified state. Watchdogs, brown-out behavior, safe-state on fault. * Firmware observability - Structured logging to nonvolatile memory that survives a reset, health/diagnostic reporting the fleet can read, and the firmware-level signals that feed fleet KPIs. If the device can't prove it behaved correctly, it didn't. * Hardware bring-up & debugging - Board bring-up, driver work, and the kind of debugging that needs a scope and a logic analyzer - including chasing silicon errata to ground truth when the bug could be on either side of the wire. First 90 Days * Day 30: Understand the motor-control firmware and the PreScript interface. First PR to a driver or a safety state machine. Paired with the CTO on the hardware interface. You can explain the dispense lifecycle and the firmware safety invariants. * Day 60: Own a subsystem end-to-end (motor control, or sensor acquisition + cross-check). Firmware observability improved - a field failure produces enough evidence to diagnose it remotely. Hardware-in-loop tests expanded. * Day 90: A full dispense driven through your firmware on real hardware, with the safety interlocks and cross-checks proven under fault injection. Every critical signal is cross-checked; every fault has a defined safe state and a runbook., * 5+ years embedded / firmware - bare-metal and/or RTOS, in C/C++ and/or Rust, shipped to production hardware. * Motor / motion control - PWM, timers, DMA, current sensing, control loops. You reason in timing budgets, not just function calls. * Microcontroller depth - ARM Cortex-M (STM32 or similar): interrupts, DMA, clock trees, peripherals. You've read a datasheet and an errata sheet to ground truth. * Safety-critical systems - you've built firmware where failure has physical consequences (medical, automotive, avionics, robotics, industrial). Fail-closed is a reflex, not a checklist. * State machines - you design in states and transitions and can reason about every edge, including the fault edges. Important * Hardware/software debugging - scope, logic analyzer, JTAG/SWD. * Serial / hardware interfaces - UART, SPI, I2C, RS485, TCP, protobuf, or similar custom wire protocols. * Real-time reasoning - deadlines, jitter, priority inversion, worst-case timing. * Firmware observability - logging that survives a reset, remote diagnostics, fault forensics from the field., * Technical Interview (90 min) - a take-home walkthrough plus a live design exercise; we fix and improve together and talk through operational and safety thinking. * Design Interview (60 min) - we go deeper on a control/observability subsystem: how it fails, how you'd know, and how you make the bad state impossible. * Leadership Interview (60 min) - culture, mission, and long-term fit. What We Offer * Early-stage equity in automated pharmacy dispensing at scale * Direct impact - your firmware physically, safely moves medication for real patients * Small team, zero bureaucracy, high trust * Hard problems: safety-critical firmware, real-time hardware integration, regulatory compliance, * Direct Patient Impact: Your firmware will improve healthcare outcomes for millions of patients * Market Leadership: Ground-floor opportunity to define an entirely new category of healthcare technology * Technical Innovation: Genuinely novel problems at the intersection of AI, robotics, and healthcare * Career Acceleration: High-visibility role with significant growth potential as the company scales Team and Culture * World-Class Team: Work alongside exceptional engineers, AI researchers, and healthcare experts * Reports to the Head of Software Engineering with significant autonomy and influence * Direct Access: Work directly with the CTO on the hardware interface, with real autonomy and influence * Innovation Focus: Culture that prioritizes breakthrough thinking and rapid experimentation * Mission-Driven: United around transforming healthcare through technology