Principal Embedded Systems Engineer/ Team Lead

What You’ll Do

• Own the technical direction of our on-device platform: the Linux application stack, the C++ peripherals layer (camera driver, IMU estimation, motor control, I2C/SPI/GPIO peripherals), OTA, and the deployment to the device fleet.
• Lead and mentor a small team, setting priorities, reviewing designs, and driving execution while remaining deeply hands-on in the codebase.
• Make and defend architectural decisions across a multi-language system (Python, C++, containerized services on ARM Linux).
• Stretch into adjacent domains as the work demands – motor control, sensor filtering, hardware debugging, board bring-up support, manufacturing/assembly-line QA tooling.
• Partner with electrical engineers on hardware design changes and new product introductions: reading schematics, debugging boards with DMM/scope/logic analyzer, and feeding hardware learnings back into firmware and software.

What You’ll Need

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time spent on embedded Linux systems or otherwise close to hardware.
• Strong proficiency in C/C++ and Python – you're comfortable across the stack from real-time C++ peripherals code to Python application services.
• Demonstrated experience shipping and operating embedded products at scale: OTA, fleet observability, manufacturing provisioning, and the operational realities of devices you can't easily reach.
• The ability to own ambiguous problems end-to-end: scoping, prototyping, shipping, and measuring – across software, hardware, and the seams between them.
• Comfort with leadership: you've mentored engineers, led technical direction, or driven cross-team initiatives, even if your title didn't say "lead."
• Baseline hardware fluency – reading a schematic, debugging with a scope or logic analyzer, and collaborating with EEs.

Nice to Have

• Experience with motor control, sensor fusion, or other robotics-adjacent problems (Kalman filtering, control loops, IMU integration).
• Experience with edge AI accelerators, depth cameras, or video pipelines on embedded hardware.
• Microcontroller firmware experience — not required for our current platform, but useful for future work.
• Experience with containerized deployment on ARM, systemd, udev, device tree, or kernel modules.

Why Catapult?

• Ambitious, intelligent people in an exciting industry, and do some of the best work of your life.
• Constructive, open, and honest communication to make Catapult extraordinary.
• Collaborative yet challenging environment to consistently improve our performance, which in turn impacts our customers' performance.
• Workforce spanning more than 20 countries, with the opportunity to work with people from multiple nationalities and cultures, and to build your global awareness.
• Challenging ourselves to continuously grow and become a high-performance company, with a growth mindset in everything we do, and our people are always looking for ways to improve.
• Unlimited opportunity to grow, do more, and do better.

Compensation & Benefits

• The target Total Compensation range for this position is $133,594 - $267,188 per year.
• This range is inclusive of base salary and a target incentive plan (which may include equity, commission, or other bonus structures).
• Your specific compensation within this range will be determined by factors such as your geographic location, relevant experience, and job-related skills.
• In addition to this compensation, Catapult also offers generous paid leave and recognized company holidays, and the opportunity to participate in our comprehensive benefits package, including Health, Dental, and Vision insurance, and 401(k) retirement plan with company match.

Contact Information

To find out more, please contact the Talent Partner for this role.