Firmware Engineer

Skip is on a mission to make life joyful through powered movement.

Movement is a powerful way to build physical, mental and social health. Yet it is elusive for 2 billion people due to age, injury, or disability. We are building productsthat will restore mobility for millions and enable a new frontier of joyful movement experiences. We want to build a future where a grandparent can easily outrun their grandkids and no one is left behind at the trailhead.

Skip is a 20-person early-stage start-up that spun out of Google X in 2023. With deep cross-disciplinary expertise and key partnerships (e.g. with Arc’teryx) we are uniquely positioned to launch the first commercially successful wearable robotic device, the MO/GO, develop a platform to launch future Movewear products and transform millions of lives in the coming years.

THE ROLE:

We are seeking a highly motivated and adaptable individual who will explore the peaks and valleys of all problems that may come up while building a new generation of wearable robots for everyday life.

We are looking for a senior firmware engineer. We are a team of 20 phenomenal senior engineers and product leaders, where everyone contributes directly to product development. As such this will start as an individual contributor role, with leadership for critical systems.

Some of the specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Owning our embedded C/C++, including FreeRTOS managing, interrupts, JTAG/SWD debugging etc
• Improve and iterate on our handling of data communication between peripherals and chips such as the ESP32, STM32 etc. Including Wi-FI and BLE
• Implement appropriate secure OTAs and bootloaders
• Help manage our AWS IoT Core: mTLS, MQTT, Things/certs/policies, fleet provisioning, IoT Jobs OTA
• Help us precisely control a range of actuators including off-the-shelf BLDCs, custom PMSM and axial flux motors, cycloid gearboxes, and series elastic actuators, including writing firmware for our motor control chip (currently c2000; but likely to change over time)
• Guide design and development decisions for future iterations of the product, and future systems; including novel actuator design, chip selection and firmware requirements
• Help develop other aspects of our end-to-end real-time embedded firmware / linux systems, from vision and roadmap through design and into practice, including for adjacent products such as our Parkinson’s product, future clinical and research devices which require more edge-compute
• Wear prototypes several hours a week to participate in data collection, on-body testing and provide feedback
• Bring joy to the team, participate in embarrassing team events, tolerate KZ’s terrible music

Basic Qualifications:

• 5+ years’ experience working in firmware development
• Demonstrable expertise in embedded C/C++ for high performance applications, ideally including FreeRTOS
• Experience programming the ESP32 and STM32, or similar chipsets
• Experience with AWS IoT Core systems and fleet management, including OTA updates
• Experience with design for systems at scale, with a focus on testing and validation
• Expertise with Linux, command-line tools, Python scripting
• Strong experience developing real-time firmware for multi-sensor systems
• Knowledge of low level hardware and OS internals at a kernel level
• Attention to detail, even in the middle of overly-long lists
• Experience with troubleshooting tools (JTAG, SWD, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers)
• Ability to work at the Skip Bay Area office 3 days/week
• Sense of humour, tolerant of Aussie & Canadian spelling

Bonus Points:

• Experience with robotics or powered consumer electronics (e.g. drones, robot vacuums)
• Experience controlling PMSM, including Ti and STM chipsets
• Experience with TFLite Micro/X-Cube-AI
• Experience in start-up environments and using AI coding tools to leverage your skills for broader impact
• Personal motivation to improve human movement
• Taylor Swift fan. Good taste in background music :)

This is a full time hybrid position working at the Skip office in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco.