Senior Firmware Engineer
About Helion
Helion is a fusion power company based in Everett, WA, dedicated to building the world's first fusion power plant. Our mission is to provide clean, reliable, and affordable energy for everyone. Founded in 2013, we have raised $1.5 billion from leading investors including Sam Altman, Mithril, and Capricron Investment Group, among others. Our current prototype, Polaris, has achieved record-breaking plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius (13 keV), and we are on track to build the world's first fusion power plant, Orion.
What You Will Be Doing
As a Senior Firmware Engineer, you will develop the embedded systems that power the control, diagnostics, and protection layers of our fusion machines. You will write and maintain firmware that runs on thousands of distributed embedded devices, controlling and monitoring tens of thousands of sensors, actuators, and data channels. This role involves bridging hardware and software, working closely with electrical and software engineers to design reliable, scalable, and high-performance control and data acquisition systems. You will help define communication protocols, improve time synchronization across embedded networks, and automate hardware bring-up and testing. This position is ideal for an engineer who enjoys working close to the metal, debugging complex systems, and rapidly iterating on real-world hardware to make fusion power a practical reality.
Required Skills
- BS or higher in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or Computer Science
- 8+ years of experience developing embedded systems in C, C++, and/or Rust
- Experience with real-time MCU development (bare metal or RTOS-based)
- Strong understanding of digital communication protocols (UART, SPI, I²C)
- Familiarity with mixed-signal circuit design and debugging using oscilloscopes, DMMs, and logic analyzers
- Experience with version control systems (Git)
- Scripting experience in Python for automation, hardware bring-up, or testing
- Solid grasp of embedded systems fundamentals: power, timing, data, and memory budgets
- Experience developing and debugging on Linux-based systems
Benefits
- Medical, Dental, and Vision plans for employees and their families
- 31 Days of PTO (21 vacation days and 10 sick days)
- 10 Paid holidays, plus company-wide winter break
- Up to 5% employer 401(k) match
- Short term disability, long term disability, and life insurance
- Paid parental leave and support (up to 16 weeks)
- Annual wellness stipend
Compensation Range
$200K - $236K