Senior Firmware Engineer
Thermo Fisher Scientific · Oakwood Village, OH · 6 days ago
On-siteScienceFull-time
Position Summary
We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Firmware Engineer to design, develop, test, and maintain embedded firmware for next-generation connected products. This role requires strong hands-on experience with embedded C, real-time operating systems, and microcontroller-based development, with particular emphasis on Renesas chipsets.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, debug, and maintain embedded firmware using C for microcontroller-based systems.
- Develop firmware running on real-time operating systems, including task scheduling, inter-task communication, timing, synchronization, and resource management.
- Bring up and integrate firmware on Renesas-based platforms, including peripheral configuration, board support packages, bootloaders, and device drivers.
- Work closely with electrical engineering teams to support hardware bring-up, schematic review, board validation, and root-cause analysis.
- Develop and maintain low-level drivers for interfaces such as I2C, SPI, UART, USB, CAN, Ethernet, GPIO, ADC, PWM, and similar embedded peripherals.
- Participate in firmware architecture, design reviews, code reviews, and technical decision-making.
- Implement robust, maintainable, and testable firmware for commercial or industrial embedded products.
- Debug complex firmware and hardware interactions using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, JTAG/SWD debuggers, and other lab equipment.
- Support integration of embedded systems with higher-level software, connectivity stacks, and cloud-based services.
- Create and maintain technical documentation, including requirements, design specifications, test plans, and release notes.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality products on schedule.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
- 7+ years of professional embedded firmware development experience.
- Strong programming experience in embedded C.
- Hands-on experience developing firmware for real-time operating systems such as FreeRTOS, ThreadX, Zephyr, embOS, or similar.
- Experience developing firmware for Renesas microcontrollers or microprocessors, including use of Renesas development tools, SDKs, BSPs, or IDEs.
- Strong understanding of embedded systems concepts, including interrupts, timers, DMA, memory management, bootloaders, power management, and communication protocols.
- Experience with firmware debugging tools such as JTAG/SWD, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and protocol analyzers.
- Familiarity with common embedded communication interfaces including SPI, I2C, UART, USB, CAN, and Ethernet.
- Experience with version control systems such as Git.
- Ability to read schematics and work closely with hardware engineers during board bring-up and troubleshooting.
- Strong analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with AWS IoT Greengrass, AWS IoT Core, or cloud-connected embedded devices.
- Experience with secure boot, firmware update mechanisms, device provisioning, certificates, encryption, or embedded cybersecurity.
- Experience with connectivity protocols such as MQTT, TCP/IP, BLE, Wi-Fi, or cellular.
- Experience developing Linux-based edge applications or integrating microcontroller firmware with embedded Linux systems.
- Experience with automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, static analysis, or code quality tools for embedded software.
- Experience in regulated, industrial, medical, life sciences, or high-reliability product environments.
- Familiarity with software development processes such as Agile, Scrum, or stage-gate product development.