Firmware Engineer, Robotics
OpenAIAbout the Team
We are building general-purpose robotics. In the short term, we are focused on robots to support skilled workers to build our future infrastructure. In the long term, we imagine everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need. Progress is rapid, and based on a foundation of co-design between robotics hardware and ML research.
About the Role
As a Firmware Engineer, you will define and drive the architecture of embedded systems for next-generation hardware products. You will own foundational firmware decisions across real-time execution, device bring-up, hardware interfaces, fault handling, safety mechanisms, and production readiness.
We’re looking for someone with deep experience building safety-critical or high-consequence systems, where failures can have meaningful consequences. You should be comfortable reasoning about risk, designing for diagnosability and graceful degradation, and creating engineering practices that raise the reliability bar for the entire team.
You should also be unusually good at moving fast. Sometimes the right answer is a carefully reviewed architecture that will endure for years; sometimes it is getting a rough-but-useful prototype working by the end of the afternoon so the team can learn something concrete tomorrow. We value engineers who know the difference, make that call well, and can operate credibly in both modes.
You will be both a technical leader and a hands-on builder: setting direction, reviewing critical designs, unblocking the hardest problems, and writing production firmware when it matters most.
Our embedded stack uses a lot of Rust. Extensive experience in the language is a big help!
This role is based in San Francisco, CA. This role will be expected to be in office 4 days per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you will:
Rapidly bring up new hardware and set execution pace for the team.
Lead firmware architecture for embedded systems spanning boot, RTOS/runtime behavior, peripheral control, power management, communications, and field diagnostics.
Define engineering standards for reliability, fault tolerance, observability, and maintainability across the firmware stack.
Design and review safety-critical mechanisms, including fault detection, recovery paths, watchdog strategies, redundancy where appropriate