Sr. to Staff Embedded Controls Software Engineer - Delivery Drones

Sr. to Staff Embedded Controls Software Engineer - Delivery Drones

San Francisco, CA (you can work from home up to 2x/week)

The team builds small, lightweight autonomous delivery drones with safety-first hardware designed to operate around people and everyday urban infrastructure. The work has a positive impact on the sustainability, access, and cost of everyday necessities.

You would be working in the company's office in San Francisco. You could work from home up to 2x/week.

You would be joining an elite group of about 60 people and 20 engineers inside a much larger public company. This org operates as a small, fast-moving hardware innovation lab: minimal bureaucracy, real build/test cycles, and ownership of systems that ship and operate at a very large scale.

In this position, you would be developing and deploying closed-loop control algorithms and embedded C/C++ firmware for robotic systems, including motion control, motor control, and sensor integration. You would be owning the development, bring-up, and debugging of ARM-based microcontroller platforms, working with bare-metal and RTOS-based systems.

You would be collaborating closely with electrical, mechanical, and software engineers to build reliable, production-ready electromechanical systems.

The company has a compensation range based on experience, with salary of $180k-$285k, plus RSUs translating into total first year compensation of $300k-$540k.

Job Responsibilities:

• Owning the control bring-up and integration for new embedded platforms (e.g. ARM Cortex-M series).
• Developing and maintain bare-metal firmware and RTOS-based applications for robotic subsystems (motor control, sensors, telemetry, power systems).
• Writing and maintaining robust, maintainable, and well-documented C/C++ code for embedded targets.
• Collaborating with the electrical engineering team on hardware bring-up, schematic review, and system integration.
• Contributing to system bringup, validation, and debug.
• Contributing to firmware safety, reliability, and system-level robustness.

Qualifications:

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• At least 3 years (preferably more) of hands-on experience in embedded control systems development.
• Experience developing, implementing, and deploying closed-loop control algorithms in production embedded systems for electromechanical applications, such as robotics, motor control, or autonomous vehicles.
• Deep expertise in bare-metal programming on ARM microcontrollers.
• Strong proficiency in C/C++ for embedded targets and firmware design patterns.
• Experience with hardware bring-up and low-level debugging on custom boards.
• Solid understanding of digital electronics, buses (I2C, SPI, UART, CAN), and embedded peripherals.
• Strong system-level thinking, with an ability to work independently and take ownership across the full development cycle.

Nice to have:

• Experience with RTOS (e.g., FreeRTOS, Zephyr) or Embedded Linux on constrained systems.
• Familiarity with motor control, power systems, or battery management in robotics or automotive contexts.
• Experience working closely with hardware teams, reading schematics, and performing board-level debug.
• Familiarity with safety-critical systems, watchdogs, and fault handling.
• Comfortable working in fast-paced, high-ownership engineering environments like those found in startups or advanced R&D teams.

About Skyrocket Ventures

Skyrocket Ventures is a recruiting firm for hundreds of high growth technology companies that range from industry leaders to top-tier startups. This opportunity is with one of our client companies for a full-time permanent hire. Please only apply if you are authorized to work in the U.S.

Please note that even if this job is not a perfect match, we encourage you to apply as long as it is in the ballpark. Companies are often flexible in hiring candidates who do not perfectly fit their written job description, as long as the most important qualifications are there and the candidate is good in general.

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If we have any potential matches, we’ll share your resume with those companies and contact you about any interview opportunities we can get you. Thank you, and we wish you a great job search!