Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer (IoT / Wi-Fi / BLE)

Arculus is building Arculus Boxx, a secure, connected delivery box that keeps packages safe and out of sight until the homeowner is home. It combines hardware, firmware, and connectivity to solve porch piracy, a problem that affects nearly one in two households. We are a small, fully remote team preparing to launch on Kickstarter and bring the product to market., We are looking for a Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer to own the low-level firmware and the hardware-firmware integration that makes Arculus Boxx work. You sit between the PCB and the rest of the product. You write the firmware that controls the lock, sensors, camera, BLE and Wi-Fi radios, power states, and tamper detection. You co-design the electronics with our PCB engineer so we don’t ship hardware that the firmware can’t reasonably support. You are not the cloud engineer, you are not the app engineer, and you are not the IT software engineer. You are the person who makes the hardware do what it is supposed to do, reliably, in the field.

This is a move from EVT toward a production-ready v1 for Kickstarter fulfillment and a CES Las Vegas debut in January 2027.

What You’ll Do

• Co-design the electronics with our PCB engineer at the schematic stage, including MCU selection, radio selection, sensor selection, camera module selection, and pinout. You have veto power on any board design that does not work for firmware

• Build bare-metal and RTOS firmware in C and C++ for the chosen MCU, including BLE pairing and provisioning, BLE-assisted or AP-mode Wi-Fi onboarding, and a custom protocol for app communication and lock control

• Implement device logic for power states (wall power and battery backup), lock mechanism control, mechanical button and switch processing, LED behavior (internal and external), tamper detection and alarms, internal and external temperature sensing, and camera capture workflows including barcode and QR decode

• Build event logging, store-and-forward behavior, JSON-based event uploads to the backend, and basic command handling (capture image, flash LEDs, lock state, etc.) so the firmware and the cloud meet at clean, well-defined contracts

• Implement secure HTTPS communication with backend services, secure boot, key provisioning, and OTA firmware updates with rollback

• Hand off cleanly to our CTO and the cloud team for the MQTT, telemetry, and image-upload pipeline so firmware and cloud meet at well-defined contracts, not in the middle of someone else’s lane

• Spec and own the manufacturing test workflow: production calibration, firmware flashing, end-of-line testing, and any board-bring-up tooling needed for the contract manufacturer

• Support FCC pre-cert: radio configuration, transmit power, and any firmware-side conditioning needed for compliance

• Build the validation tools, test procedures, and automated test rigs that prove the device works before it leaves your bench

What’s In Scope

• All low-level firmware on the device

• Hardware co-design with the PCB engineer

• The firmware side of every connectivity, security, OTA, image-capture, and manufacturing-test surface

• Production-grade security hardening

• Black-box system testing, validation tools, and test automation for the device

Out of Scope (for now)

• Backend, cloud architecture, AWS infrastructure, and web services

• Mobile app development (iOS and Android)

• High-level embedded application code that lives above your firmware layer where it interacts with cloud-side data processing

• Continuous video streaming

Do you have experience in Wireless networking?, 8+ years of embedded firmware development experience, including consumer or industrial hardware that actually shipped

• Deep hands-on C and C++ on ARM Cortex-M class MCUs, bare-metal and RTOS (FreeRTOS, Zephyr, or similar)

• Direct experience with BLE and Wi-Fi stacks on common SoCs (Nordic nRF, ESP32, STM32WB, Silicon Labs, or comparable)

• Real PCB-side fluency: schematic review in KiCad or equivalent, board bring-up, oscilloscope and logic-analyzer debugging

• Hands-on experience integrating camera modules on embedded devices and decoding barcodes and QR codes, on-device or with cloud-assisted decode

• Experience with secure boot, signed OTA with rollback, and key provisioning

• REST-based backend communication and JSON event modeling on the device side

• A specialist mindset. You know where firmware ends and where cloud, app, and IT software begin, and you respect those lines

• The temperament to push back on hardware design choices early rather than work around them later

• Comfortable working alongside evolving hardware and a bias toward shipping production-grade firmware, not bench demos

Strong Plus

• Manufacturing test engineering and DFM experience with contract manufacturers

• Prior FCC, CE, or UL submission cycles on a wireless consumer product

$105,000 - $115,000 a year - Full-time, Arculus is in the concept and pre-revenue phase. All team members, including the founders, are compensated through profit shares using the Slicing Pie model, not a cash salary.

• All time contributions are tracked

• Hours are credited at 2x fair market value

• Contributions convert into profit shares

• A cash salary begins once Arculus reaches break-even or raises a funding round

• All earned profit shares are retained permanently

Learn more about the Slicing Pie model at https://slicingpie.com.

Why Join Arculus

• Own the firmware on a consumer hardware product that ships in 2027, from MCU selection through field deployment

• Real veto on hardware decisions, with a PCB engineer who actually wants your input

• Clean lane boundaries: you are not getting handed cloud or app work that you did not sign up for

• Non-linear earning potential tied directly to the success of the product

• Fully remote work

• Real ownership in what you build, from day one

• A small, fast-moving, collaborative team

If you want meaningful ownership in a real consumer-hardware launch, and you have been waiting for a role where firmware sits at the table for hardware decisions instead of inheriting them, we would love to hear from you.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $105,000.00 - $115,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Stock options

People with a criminal record are encouraged to apply

Application Question(s):

• This role uses a Slicing Pie-based compensation model during the pre-revenue phase. Contributions are tracked and converted into profit shares; there is no cash salary until break-even or funding.

Have you read and do you understand this compensation structure?

• Why are you interested in a contribution-for-equity/profit-share model at this stage of a startup?
• How many hours per week can you realistically contribute to this project over the next 3-6 months?
• Early-stage startups often involve ambiguity, rapid iteration, and limited structure. How comfortable are you operating in this type of environment?
• Walk us through one consumer or industrial product where you owned the firmware end to end, including the BLE or Wi-Fi stack, secure boot or OTA, and the production test workflow. What shipped, and what would you have done differently?

You bring your own development environment, debuggers, and electronics bench. We provide the custom hardware revisions as they come off the line, and you ramp on common dev boards (Nordic, ESP32, STM32 evaluation kits) in parallel so you are productive while waiting for the real boards.

Coming In Eyes Open

We want you to join with a clear picture of what this is. Arculus is pre-revenue. There is no cash salary today; you would be contributing your work in exchange for a real, tracked ownership stake. The plan is ambitious and still being built: priorities shift, the path is not always mapped, and you will sometimes be building the plane while it is in the air. You will wear more than one hat, and you will not have a large team or heavy process around you. For the right person, that is the appeal: real ownership, real influence, and the chance to shape something from the ground up. For someone who needs stability, structure, and a steady paycheck right now, this is honestly not the right time to join, and we would rather say so plainly than have you find out later.