Senior Robotics Firmware Engineer
Nimble Robotics
$180,000 - $230,000 / year
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Description
Nimble is an AI robotics company building the autonomous supply chain to power fast, efficient and economical commerce. We’re training robot AGI to power a proprietary generalist supply chain superhumanoid, the first robot in the world capable of performing thousands of tasks across the supply chain. We’ve raised over $220M at over $1B valuation and formed a strategic alliance with FedEx to build a national network of autonomous warehouses capable of generating many billions in annual revenue. We are a hardcore and obsessed team of the world’s best engineers and operators. If you are obsessed with your craft, enjoy a high-intensity and fast moving high impact environment, are super high agency in getting hard things done and want to be part of building the world’s most legendary robotics company at the most pivotal moment in history, we want to work with you.
We are on a mission to empower and inspire mankind to accomplish legendary feats by inventing robots that liberate us from the menial. We will accomplish this by training robot AGI to invent and build the Autonomous Supply Chain – everything from the inside of factories and warehouses to your front door – powered by generalist superhumanoids.
Our founding team comes from the AI labs at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon and our board of directors include famed robotics and AI legends including Fei-Fei Li (Chief Scientist of AI at Google and Director of Stanford’s AI Lab), Marc Raibert (founder of Boston Dynamics), and Sebastian Thrun (founder of GoogleX, Waymo; Stanford Professor and considered the father of autonomous vehicles).
Let’s be legendary.
The Role
We are looking for a Senior Robotics Firmware Engineer to build the core firmware powering our next-generation autonomous robots. In this role, you will develop the systems that allow our robots to operate with exceptional reliability, precision, and efficiency in real production environments. You will work across robot control, sensing and runtime execution — building robust, production-grade firmware that scales as we deploy more robots into high-throughput warehouse operations. You’ll collaborate closely with our hardware, AI, and infrastructure teams to integrate frontier AI capabilities into practical, real-world robotics systems and to continually improve robot uptime, performance, and overall intelligence.
Responsibilities
- Lead design and implementation of embedded firmware for real-time motor and actuator control, sensor integration, manipulation, and safe, high-reliability operation.
- Own the low-level communication between microcontrollers and peripherals or higher-level compute stack, including CAN/CAN-FD, serial buses, and Ethernet, ensuring deterministic, low-latency, and robust behavior.
- Design safe-state and fault handling behavior for safety-critical subsystems.
- Partner closely with electrical and hardware engineering on board bring-up and software–hardware integration for new robot platforms and upgrades.
- Improve actuation and control performance, such as latency, precision, and reliability, using measurable metrics and data-driven iteration.
- Debug and resolve issues across development, HIL testing and production environments.
- Participate in and lead technical design reviews and drive architecture decisions for core embedded systems.
- Mentor cross-functional engineers and technicians, and raise the bar on firmware reliability, testing, and operational excellence.
- Triage firmware-related issues to ensure reliability of production robots, and help diagnose and resolve operational issues when they arise
Qualifications
- Bachelor, Master, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, or a related engineering field.
- Strong experience with embedded firmware domains, e.g. real-time control, motor or actuator drive, sensor interfacing, and communication protocols
- 4+ years of firmware or embedded systems engineering experience building production robotics or automation systems.
- Strong proficiency in at least one of the following programming languages: Rust, C, C++.
- Experience developing on microcontrollers with real-time constraints, whether RTOS-based or bare-metal.
- Experience integrating firmware with sensors, actuators, and communication buses such as CAN, SPI, I²C, and UART.
- Proven ability to design, implement, and maintain complex, high-reliability embedded systems.
- Familiarity with software best practices including testing, documentation, code reviews, and robust architectural design.
- Excellent communication, ownership, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- Willingness to support production operations through an on-call rotation.
Nice to have
- Exposure to automation environments such as warehousing, manufacturing, or logistics
- Experience with multi-DOF robotics system, e.g. articulated arms, humanoid, autonomous vehicles.
- Experience with motor control techniques such as field-oriented control, commutation, and encoder calibration.
- Experience with functional-safety standards and safe design, e.g. IEC 60204-1 stop categories, ISO 13849, or IEC 61508.
Additional Requirements
Compensation
About this role
Nimble Robotics is building autonomous supply chain robots at scale, with a FedEx partnership and over $1B valuation. This Senior Robotics Firmware Engineer role sits at the core of that mission—you'll own the embedded firmware that keeps their next-generation robots operating reliably and precisely in high-throughput warehouse environments. The work spans real-time motor and actuator control, sensor integration, communication protocols (CAN, Ethernet, serial buses), and fault handling for safety-critical systems. You'll debug across development, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and production, then feed those learnings back into architecture decisions that affect the entire fleet.
This is a hands-on technical leadership position. You'll partner directly with hardware and AI teams to integrate frontier capabilities into production robots, mentor engineers and technicians, and drive improvements in latency, precision, and uptime using data-driven iteration. The role demands strong embedded systems fundamentals—4+ years building production robotics or automation firmware, fluency in Rust, C, or C++, and real experience with microcontroller real-time constraints, sensor and actuator integration, and communication buses. You'll also own on-call support for production operations.
The position is in-office in San Francisco and offers a salary range of $180K–$230K. If you thrive in high-intensity, fast-moving environments where you can see your firmware directly impact thousands of robots in the field, and you have the embedded systems depth this role demands, it's worth a close look.
How this employer is doing
solid
- H1B: Sponsors Visas
- Recently Raised Funding
- Sponsors Visas
In the news
Nimble Robotics raises $65M in pursuit of fully autonomous fulfillment network, FreightWaves
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Pay for this role
$180,000 to $230,000 per year
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