Senior Firmware Engineer

Title: Senior Firmware Engineer

Job Type: Long Term Contract

Location: Schaumburg, IL – Onsite 4x / week

Rate: $55-60 / hr

Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, 401k

Our client is seeking a Senior Firmware Engineer for a long-term contract supporting connected consumer products. This individual will develop, deploy, and troubleshoot production firmware across multiple embedded product platforms.

The engineer must be comfortable working independently, learning an existing technical environment quickly, and troubleshooting issues across both firmware and hardware. The successful candidate will be expected to become productive quickly and take ownership of assigned development initiatives with limited day-to-day technical oversight.

Expertise in Rust and C is essential, along with productive Python experience for testing, automation, and tooling. The ideal candidate will have at least five years of experience developing and shipping firmware for production products and will be comfortable working with constrained microcontrollers, RTOS environments, Bluetooth Low Energy, hardware debugging tools, and technical documentation.

Experience developing firmware for consumer products is highly valued due to the pace and delivery expectations associated with commercial product development. Engineers coming from medical devices, defense, industrial, or other regulated embedded environments may also be successful if they demonstrate strong technical fundamentals and adaptability.

Required Qualifications

• 5 years of experience developing firmware that has been released into production products rather than solely prototypes or internal tools.
• Strong hands-on expertise with both Rust and C, with advanced Rust experience highly valued.
• Working knowledge of Python for testing, automation, and development tooling.
• Embedded C development experience on constrained microcontrollers, including experience with FreeRTOS or similar RTOS environments.
• Understanding of embedded resource constraints, including stack, memory, and flash considerations.
• Strong knowledge of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocols, including GATT, advertising, connection parameters, pairing, and bonding.
• Hardware-debugging experience using tools such as SWD, oscilloscopes, and logic analyzers.
• Ability to systematically isolate issues across firmware, hardware, communications, and connected devices.
• Ability to independently interpret datasheets, reference manuals, technical documentation, and hardware errata.
• Experience with Git-based development and pull-request workflows, including experience working with submodules.
• Ability to independently take ownership of firmware development projects from troubleshooting through implementation and delivery.
• Ability to collaborate directly with electrical engineering, Quality, software engineering, and external vendors.
• Experience working within established firmware release, update, and manufacturing-test processes.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly explain technical decisions and troubleshooting approaches.
• Willingness to complete a focused technical assessment as part of the interview process.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing firmware for consumer or connected products.
• Experience with Silicon Labs Gecko SDK and Simplicity Studio.
• Experience with ESP32 platforms, esp-idf, and/or esp-rs.
• Experience with Jenkins or comparable CI/CD platforms supporting embedded builds.
• Experience with Nordic, STM, TI, Silicon Labs, or similar embedded chipsets and platforms.
• Experience integrating embedded devices with iOS or Android applications.
• Extensive hands-on experience with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, debuggers, and other embedded-development laboratory equipment.
• Experience independently maintaining or working within an embedded-development benchtop environment.