About the Role
Join our innovative IoT team as a Senior Firmware Engineer at Sanctuary Computer, where you’ll drive embedded systems development for cutting-edge hardware products. This remote role empowers you to own firmware architecture from hardware bring-up to field deployment, collaborating with hardware engineers, product teams, and clients on real-time solutions for connectivity, sensors, and displays. If you’re a self-managing expert passionate about shipping robust firmware that thrives in real-world conditions, this position offers the autonomy to make impactful architectural decisions under ambiguity.
Key Responsibilities
- Own firmware architecture decisions across multiple active product platforms, ensuring scalability and maintainability in embedded environments.
- Bring up new hardware revisions independently, integrating peripheral drivers like I2C, SPI, UART, and GPIO with minimal ramp time.
- Monitor deployed firmware in the field, triage issues, and ship urgent fixes while maintaining discipline in real-time constraints.
- Design and implement wireless connectivity flows, including pairing, OTA updates, reconnect logic, and fleet health monitoring for IoT devices.
- Reprocess and validate firmware behavior across hardware variants and edge cases to guarantee reliability in production.
- Integrate new sensors, actuators, and communication modules into existing firmware architectures, optimizing for cost-effective solutions.
- Participate in code reviews, upholding high standards for style, correctness, and long-term maintainability in C/C++ codebases.
- Track project scope, timelines, and technical risks, surfacing issues early and communicating directly with clients to align on tradeoffs.
Requirements & Qualifications
- Expertise in writing production-level C/C++ at the register level, managing memory layout, interrupt handling, and real-time constraints without supervision.
- Proven experience shipping embedded firmware through DVT into mass production for products with real end users.
- Ability to independently bring up new hardware, including bootloader, BSP, device tree, and peripheral drivers—no hand-holding required.
- Deep fluency in RTOS (FreeRTOS preferred), with hands-on design and debugging of scheduling, priority inversion, watchdog logic, and power states.
- Full ownership of the debug cycle: reading schematics, using lab instruments, isolating timing/concurrency bugs, and writing postmortems.
- Strong knowledge of low-level bus protocols (I2C, SPI, UART, GPIO) at the register level, beyond high-level frameworks.
- Self-managing professional who sets accurate estimates, flags risks early, delivers reliably, and communicates technical tradeoffs to non-engineers.
What We Offer
- Competitive contract compensation ranging from $150-200k/year, based on experience, in a worker-owned creative collective that shares profits and open-sources projects.
- Remote, flexible work environment fostering a happy, diverse studio culture with a focus on work-life balance and curiosity beyond the job.
- Opportunities to collaborate on exciting initiatives with clients like Google, Stripe, and MIT, while contributing to innovative products like The Light Phone.
- Autonomy to own your work in a decentralized team, with support for deep work, strategic discussions, and professional growth through side projects and hobbies.
- Global community involvement, including operating Index Space, and investment in new ideas via financial or in-kind contributions.
How to Apply
Submit a complete application with your resume, relevant links to verify experience, and a thoughtful cover letter via the original job post at We Work Remotely. We review every thorough submission carefully and look forward to connecting with talented candidates who align with our creative, impactful mission.