Heron Power · 1 day ago
Principal Firmware Architect
Scotts Valley
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$170K/yr - $260K/yr
8+ years expHeron Power is a startup focused on building advanced power electronics for modern electricity grids. The Principal Firmware Architect will lead the technical vision and architecture for the embedded firmware platform, ensuring high performance and reliability while collaborating with various engineering teams.
EnergyIndustrialElectrical DistributionIndustrial Engineering
Responsibilities
Define and own the long-term architecture for embedded firmware across Heron products
Establish reusable platform software, hardware abstraction layers, and shared infrastructure
Set coding standards, architectural ethos, and development practices, while leading design reviews and mentoring embedded engineers
Drive system-level technical decisions across firmware and hardware boundaries
Architect and implement RTOS-based firmware for high-performance power conversion
Design low-latency control infrastructure, fault management, telemetry, real-time scheduling, and key drivers and peripherals (PWM, ADC, communications, etc.)
Evaluate and select microcontrollers/SoCs for new platforms
Build safety-critical and high-reliability firmware systems
Design bootloaders, secure firmware architecture, and update mechanisms
Implement logging, diagnostics, tracing, and observability tools on-device
Define device-side communication interfaces and data models
Partner with the connected systems team members to enable telemetry, OTA, and fleet management
Support manufacturing test, provisioning, and production workflows
Architect build system, CI/CD, and automated testing infrastructure for firmware
Define unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop testing strategies
Improve developer tooling and validation pipelines
Qualification
Required
8+ years of embedded firmware development with multiple shipped products
Expert-level embedded C/C++
Deep experience with RTOS, bootloaders, and low-level hardware drivers
Proven experience architecting large embedded systems (not just implementing features)
Experience building firmware CI/CD and automated testing frameworks
Strong hardware debugging skills (oscilloscope, logic analyzer, etc.)
Demonstrated technical leadership and mentorship
Preferred
Real-time control systems or power electronics experience
Safety-critical or high-reliability firmware (IEC 61508, UL1998, etc.)
Secure boot and device security experience
Experience integrating embedded systems with cloud/IoT platforms
FPGA or ASIC familiarity
Production manufacturing and field support experience
Benefits
Competitive compensation (salary and equity)
Benefits
Company
Heron Power
Heron Power is an energy technology startup that focuses on developing power electronics for the modern electrical grid.
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Heron Power has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (6)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$38MKey Investors
Capricorn Investment Group
2025-05-29Series A· $38M
Leadership Team
C
Chris Tilton
Director of Mechanical Engineering
Recent News
2025-10-13
2025-10-11
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