Principal Embedded Software Engineer / Firmware Architect

Principal Embedded Software Engineer

Heron Power is building cutting-edge power electronics for the 21st-century grid. The goal is to debottleneck the growth of electricity generation and consumption with scalable, innovative, and cost-effective hardware solutions — accelerating the electrification of everything.

The first product line is a better converter: inverters and rectifiers that connect large-scale renewables, storage, and loads to the grid. Heron's leadership team has designed and shipped gigawatts of power conversion products. The culture is deeply technical, first-principles, and built on the belief that no one person knows everything — the team learns together, builds together, and solves hard problems from the ground up.

Heron Power is looking for a Principal Embedded Software Engineer to own the technical vision and architecture for the embedded firmware platform. You will define how Heron's converters are operated and monitored at the device level — from microcontroller selection and RTOS architecture to resource management, safety infrastructure, and production firmware processes.

This role owns the device brain. Every Heron product is built on the firmware platform you architect. You will shape performance, reliability, maintainability, and scalability at the foundation, while partnering closely with controls and cloud engineers to deliver a complete solution. If you enjoy building robust embedded systems from the metal up and setting technical direction for an entire product line, this is that role.

What You'll Do

• Define and own the long-term architecture for embedded firmware across Heron's product line
• Establish reusable platform software, hardware abstraction layers, and shared infrastructure
• Set coding standards, architectural ethos, and development practices; lead design reviews and mentor embedded engineers
• Architect and implement RTOS-based firmware for high-performance power conversion
• Design low-latency control infrastructure, fault management, telemetry, real-time scheduling, and key drivers and peripherals including PWM, ADC, and communications
• Evaluate and select microcontrollers and SoCs for new platforms
• Design bootloaders, secure firmware architecture, and OTA update mechanisms
• Implement logging, diagnostics, tracing, and observability tools on-device
• Define device-side communication interfaces and data models; partner with the connected systems team to enable telemetry and fleet management
• Architect build system, CI/CD, and automated testing infrastructure for firmware
• Define unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop testing strategies
• Support manufacturing test, provisioning, and production workflows

You Should Have

• 8+ years of embedded firmware development with multiple shipped products
• Expert-level embedded C/C++
• Deep experience with RTOS, bootloaders, and low-level hardware drivers
• Proven experience architecting large embedded systems, not just implementing features
• Experience building firmware CI/CD and automated testing frameworks
• Strong hardware debugging skills including oscilloscope and logic analyzer proficiency
• Demonstrated technical leadership and mentorship experience

Nice to Have

• Real-time control systems or power electronics experience
• Safety-critical or high-reliability firmware experience including IEC 61508 or UL1998
• Secure boot and device security experience
• Experience integrating embedded systems with cloud or IoT platforms
• FPGA or ASIC familiarity
• Production manufacturing and field support experience

Compensation and Benefits

Base Salary: $170,000 - $260,000, depending on experience, plus equity and competitive benefits.