Embedded Systems Engineer
Local to Palo Alto, CA or Dearborn, MI is preferred but open to 100% remote need to be open to travel to either location.
- Duration: 3 months initially, extendable on quarterly terms
Location: Palo Alto, CA preferred, but open to Dearborn, MI or remote
+ Periodic travel will be required for design reviews, prototype bring-up, hardware integration, and testing.
Responsibilities
- Translate robot-level requirements into electrical, power, communications, embedded-controller, and wiring architectures.
- Develop system power budgets covering continuous loads, peak loads, inrush current, conversion losses, and fault conditions.
- Select power supplies, converters, protection devices, controllers, sensors, connectors, cables, and related components.
- Design and review electrical schematics, PCB layouts, bills of materials, and fabrication packages.
- Identify opportunities for custom electronics and determine when qualified commercial components are the better solution.
- Design robot wiring harnesses, including schematics, wire lists, connector schedules, drawings, labeling, grounding, shielding, and routing requirements.
- Coordinate with PCB fabricators, contract manufacturers, and harness suppliers through prototype and first-article builds.
- Define communications interfaces using technologies such as CAN FD, EtherCAT, Ethernet, SPI, I²C, UART, or RS-485.
- Collaborate with embedded engineers on firmware requirements for power sequencing, monitoring, diagnostics, telemetry, fault handling, bootloaders, and field updates.
- Support ROS 2 device and hardware-abstraction integration.
- Lead or support prototype board bring-up, robot power-up, communications bring-up, and system troubleshooting.
- Develop bench, hardware-in-the-loop, integration, and fault-injection tests.
- Produce editable engineering documentation, interface-control documents, test evidence, and design-decision records.
- Transfer technical knowledge so customer engineers can reproduce, modify, and extend the delivered solution.
The project’s expected disciplines include power electronics, PCB design, embedded firmware architecture, real-time control, cable and harness design, ROS 2 integration, and test engineering.
Required Qualifications
- Senior-level experience in electrical engineering, embedded hardware, mechatronics, robotics, or a related field.
- Demonstrated ownership of electrical systems for complex electromechanical products.
- Strong circuit-design, schematic-capture, and PCB-development experience.
- Experience with power conversion, distribution, switching, sequencing, monitoring, and circuit protection.
- System-level component-selection and design-tradeoff experience.
- Hands-on wiring-harness design experience, including manufacturing documentation and supplier coordination.
- Practical knowledge of microcontrollers, embedded firmware interfaces, and real-time hardware behavior.
- Experience with embedded communications protocols and physical device integration.
- Proficiency using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, current probes, electronic loads, multimeters, or comparable laboratory equipment.
- Experience bringing up and troubleshooting prototype electronics and integrated hardware.
- Ability to work independently and make sound engineering decisions in a lean, fast-moving project environment.
- Willingness to travel periodically for hands-on access to robot hardware.
Preferred Qualifications
- Robotics, autonomous systems, advanced manufacturing, automotive, or industrial automation experience.
- Experience developing a robot or complex machine from an early prototype or clean-sheet stage.
- Experience designing custom embedded controllers, carrier boards, or power-management electronics.
- Familiarity with CAN FD, EtherCAT, ROS 2, hardware-abstraction layers, and Linux-based robot compute environments.
- Experience with bootloaders, field firmware updates, watchdogs, telemetry, diagnostics, and device-version management.
- Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing and automated embedded validation.
- Familiarity with IPC-2221, IPC-2152, IPC-A-610, IPC/WHMA-A-620, IEC 60204-1, or NFPA 79.
- Experience designing for grounding, shielding, EMC, serviceability, and high-current electromechanical loads.
