Firmware & Backend Engineer – AI Wearables & Edge Systems

About the role

SF Bay Area, California | Fully On-site. We are seeking a Firmware & Backend Engineer – AI Wearables & Edge Systems to work at the intersection of wearable hardware, firmware, cloud systems, and real-time AI infrastructure. This role sits closest to the physical device and requires genuine firmware experience combined with strong systems and backend engineering capabilities. The position is fully in-person in the San Francisco Bay Area, initially in Burlingame and later in San Francisco. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States; certain visa sponsorship and transfer scenarios are available for those already in the U.S., while new petitions processed from abroad are not currently supported.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with wearable-device firmware and hardware platforms.
• Flash, configure, adapt, and integrate vendor firmware and device software.
• Work with embedded Linux, RTOS environments, and/or device SDKs.
• Evaluate camera, sensor, compute, battery, thermal, and latency requirements.
• Contribute to hardware specifications and technical discussions with external manufacturing partners.
• Develop backend infrastructure supporting real-time multimodal data pipelines.
• Work close to the system layer using technologies such as C, C++, or Rust where appropriate.
• Own components across device, backend, and cloud infrastructure.

Requirements

• Approximately 1 to 4 years of relevant engineering experience, with flexibility for exceptional candidates.
• Hands-on firmware or embedded systems experience.
• Experience with embedded Linux, RTOS, device SDKs, or comparable low-level systems.
• Strong backend or systems engineering fundamentals.
• Comfort working close to hardware and debugging across software and device boundaries.
• Experience shipping production systems in fast-moving engineering environments.
• Relevant backgrounds include robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, wearables, industrial devices, defense technology, embedded systems, and other hardware-constrained environments.