Lead Embedded Software Engineer

KO2’s client is looking for a Lead Embedded Software Engineer to drive the development of robust, scalable embedded software solutions for next-generation electric products. This role combines hands-on technical delivery with small-team leadership, offering the opportunity to influence architecture, mentor engineers, and shape the future direction of embedded platforms.

You will play a key role across the full product lifecycle - from early-stage prototyping and system design through to production, manufacturing, and long-term product support - while helping build engineering best practices and delivery capability within the team.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of high-quality embedded software that is efficient, maintainable, scalable, and production-ready
• Provide technical leadership to a small embedded software team, supporting task planning, technical direction, mentoring, and code reviews
• Collaborate closely with hardware, systems, and manufacturing teams to support board bring-up, debugging, integration, and system validation
• Own key architectural decisions, helping define software frameworks, coding standards, development processes, and long-term platform strategy
• Design, implement, test, and maintain embedded software for internally developed electric systems and connected devices
• Investigate and resolve complex real-time issues relating to timing, performance, reliability, and signal integrity
• Support continuous improvement initiatives across tooling, automation, testing, and development workflows
• Contribute to project planning, technical estimation, risk management, and delivery milestones
• Champion engineering best practices including documentation, version control, CI/CD, and software quality standards

• Strong commercial experience developing embedded software in C and C++
• Proven experience leading or mentoring engineers within a small technical team or project environment
• Strong understanding of embedded systems architecture and full software development lifecycle practices
• Experience developing RTOS-based applications
• Hands-on experience with embedded communication protocols such as BLE, CAN, I2C, UART, or SPI
• Comfortable working across hardware/software boundaries, including debugging and system integration
• Experience using version control systems, particularly Git, within collaborative development environments
• A proactive technical problem-solver with strong analytical and root-cause investigation skills
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Desirable Skills

• Exposure to functional safety standards such as ISO 13849 or ISO 26262
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and modern development tooling (e.g. Jenkins, Docker)
• Familiarity with Python for automation, tooling, or test development
• Experience contributing to technical roadmaps, architectural strategy, or platform standardisation