Type: hourly contract

Duration: TBD

Location: onsite in office 3x per week

Company Description
Focal Systems is the industry leader in retail AI solutions. We are a Silicon Valley based startup that has more than doubled in size every year since our founding. We are a Deep Learning first company. Our mission is to automate and optimize brick and mortar retail using deep learning computer vision. Focal has been deployed at scale with the top retailers in the world – including Walmart Canada. We are looking for smart, creative, and passionate people who want to help build a great and enduring company and deploy Deep Learning to the world!

The Focal Systems Hardware team is responsible for architecting, designing, prototyping, and scaling critical hardware products to expand the hardware ecosystem needed to enable fully autonomous AI-driven stores

What we are looking for
We are looking for a Contract Firmware Engineer to help with all camera firmware development to ensure our cameras have high image quality, high uptime, easy OTA, and low BOM / power draw. 

What you will do
• You will apply your technical knowledge to drive features and improvements including Architect, prototyping, implementing, and maintaining complex firmware/software designs. Write clean, easy-to-understand, robust, testable, reusable, and sustainable code tailored for embedded systems
• Contribute to existing documentation or educational content and adapt content based on product/program updates and user feedback
• Generate and evaluate functional and design specifications. Work with multi-functional teams to determine software architecture and specifications to meet the product requirements
• Work with project leaders to define assignments, schedules, quality expectations, and other project criteria
• Triage product or system issues and debug/track/resolve them by analyzing the sources of issues and the impact on hardware, Software, or service operations and quality. Quickly debug and effectively close out system issues related to the product firmware, software, and systems
• Develop and maintain various engineering tools used to debug, analyze, and test embedded products.

What you need to be successful
• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science or related technical field
• 6 years professional experience with at least 1 year of experience in a technical leadership role
• Knowledge of Python and C is required
• Background in at least 2 of the following areas: embedded firmware/software development, image processing, ARM/DSP processor architecture, Software development and debugging skills in C & C , etc.
• An understanding of Machine Learning (ML) and familiarity with ML tools and OpenCV are a plus
• Good analytical skills and good written communication skills 
• Experience in working on zero-to-one product development at scale is strongly preferred
• Experience in quick prototyping using Raspberry PI is strongly preferred
• Startup mentality, team player and willing to work in our SF office 3x per week

Why Focal Systems
Strong Values and Mission
We are a tightly-knit team with an ambitious mission and a strong set of core values, which define our approach to business and have successfully guided us since in¬ception.

Exceptional Team
We are a team of hard-working, fun-loving professionals from some of the most eminent universities, research labs, and tech companies of our time. We pride ourselves on recruiting exceptional individuals to help us redefine the state-of-the-art.

Outstanding Partners
We work with 10 of the largest retailers in the world and have a world-class roster of investors, advisors and partners to support & advise us in our endeavors.