Company Description:
Smart Component Technologies Ltd designs and builds IoT monitoring solutions for the rail, energy and mining industries, putting sensing and intelligence into environments where conventional equipment struggles.
Job Description:
We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Firmware Engineer for our firmware development team. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in IoT, a strong background in hardware, proficiency in C/C++ and Python, and the breadth to work with device data from the sensor through to the cloud. The successful candidate will be responsible for the firmware development process, ensuring the delivery of robust and efficient code, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to drive innovation.
This role offers an exciting opportunity to work in a small team of firmware engineers, work on cutting-edge IoT projects, and make a significant impact on our products. The successful candidate will take on our established firmware platform, its test regime and the code that processes data coming off our devices, with a structured handover and support from the existing team. If you are passionate about embedded systems, have a strong technical background, and thrive in a collaborative environment, we encourage you to apply.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Contribute to firmware development, sharing technical knowledge and best practice with other team members.
2. Design, develop, and maintain embedded firmware for IoT devices using C/C++ and Python
3. Collaborate with hardware engineers to ensure seamless integration between firmware and hardware
4. Implement and optimise communication protocols such as MQTT and LoRaWAN
5. Integrate firmware solutions with cloud platforms, such as AWS IoT Core
6. Analyse and debug complex hardware and firmware issues
7. Maintain existing codebases, improving documentation and code quality where required
8. Implement version control best practices, CI/CD and utilise static code analysis tools to ensure code stability
9. Continuously explore and evaluate new technologies to improve product performance and functionality
10. Maintain and develop the firmware test regime, including unit, integration and on-hardware testing, and the validation process used ahead of each release
11. Build and maintain the software modules that decode and unpack raw device payloads into structured, validated data
12. Interrogate device data where needed to validate firmware behaviour and diagnose field issues, and support colleagues undertaking wider data analysis
Qualifications:
1. Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
2. Typically 5+ years of experience in production quality embedded firmware development
3. Strong proficiency in C/C++ and Python programming
4. Strong experience with STM32 microcontrollers and the surrounding toolchain (or a comparable ARM Cortex-M family)
5. Strong familiarity with IoT protocols, such as MQTT and LoRaWAN
6. Experience with cloud integration, preferably with AWS IoT Core
7. Excellent debugging skills for hardware and firmware issues
8. Familiarity with version control systems (e.g., Git) and static code analysis tools
9. Strong problem-solving skills
10. Excellent communication and team working skills
11. Experience defining and implementing firmware test approaches, including automated and on-hardware testing
12. Experience with binary protocol design and decoding of packed sensor payloads
Desirable Skills:
· Domain knowledge within the rail, energy or mining sectors
· Experience in implementing low-power modes and optimising power consumption
· Comfort analysing device data in Python (e.g. pandas) to support engineering and product decisions
· Familiarity with real-time operating systems (RTOS) and their implementation
· Familiarity with designing, implementing and maintaining OTA firmware update mechanisms
· Experience with wireless communication technologies (e.g., BLE, Wi-Fi)
· Understanding of secure coding practices and encryption algorithms
· Engagement with the wider embedded or IoT community, for example open-source contributions, talks or technical writing
Join us if you’re passionate about pushing the boundaries of embedded technology! We value innovation-driven professionals eager to make a tangible impact through their expertise in firmware engineering—helping shape the future of connected devices worldwide!
Pay: £50,000.00-£55,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company pension
- On-site parking
- Private medical insurance
Ability to commute/relocate:
- Cambridge CB4 0WG: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)
Work authorisation:
- United Kingdom (required)
Work Location: In person
