What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Embedded Engineer position at Wavelynx?
About The Role
Wavelynx makes access control readers — the hardware and firmware that decide whether a door opens. We’re a PE-backed company scaling fast, and we’re building the engineering team that will take us there. This role is for a senior embedded / firmware engineer who wants to own hard problems in a constrained environment and build things that work reliably in the real world.
You’ll be working on Zephyr RTOS-based firmware for our APEX reader platform — nRF5340 dual-core, BLE, NFC/HF, LF prox, OSDP, and the full stack that sits on top of it. The problems are real: sub-millisecond timing, thread scheduling, protocol compliance, secure boot, power budgets, and manufacturing at volume. If you’ve spent time wondering why a GPIO edge got dropped or whether the UART FIFO overflowed, you’ll fit in.
What You’ll Do
You’ll own features from requirements through production — driver development, subsystem design, integration, debugging, and validation. You’ll write firmware that goes into real products and stays in them for years. You’ll work closely with hardware, software, and manufacturing, which means you need to communicate clearly and write specs that other people can actually use. You’ll also help build the validation infrastructure that gives us confidence before a release ships.
What We’re Looking For
A degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering is strongly preferred. In embedded firmware, the fundamentals matter. That background shows up in how people think about hardware-software interaction, timing, and signal integrity in ways that are hard to replicate otherwise.
Real RTOS experience at the thread and scheduler level — Zephyr or FreeRTOS. Not just the API surface. You should understand priority inversion, preemption, and why getting that wrong causes problems that are very hard to find.
Protocol experience at the driver level. SPI, I2C, UART, BLE — we’re not looking for someone who used a library. We want someone who has read the datasheet, written the driver, and debugged it with a logic analyzer when it didn’t work.
High-volume manufacturing background. If you’ve had to think about production test coverage, manufacturing calibration, firmware provisioning at scale, or what happens when a unit comes back from the field, that experience matters here.
Performance and reliability are hard requirements, not a goal. Experience in storage devices, medical devices, industrial controls, or automotive translates well. These environments force habits that carry into everything you build afterward.
Security fundamentals. Experience with secure boot, firmware signing, key management, or TrustZone is a plus and will become more relevant as we grow.
FPGA programming experience. Experience designing and programming FPGAs using VHDL or Verilog is a strong plus. If you understand how hardware logic intersects with firmware and have worked at that boundary, that background is directly relevant to what we build.
Ability to debug with limited tools. A UART and a logic analyzer should be enough. If you’ve only worked in environments with a full debug suite and a large support team, this role will be a stretch.
You can write. Not prose — technical documentation. Specs, design notes, comments that explain the why, not just the what. We’re building a team that can hand work off and pick it up, and that only works if people write things down.
Skills
Languages: C (primary), Python, C
RTOS / Platforms: Zephyr, FreeRTOS, ARM Cortex-M / Cortex-A
Hardware Description Languages: VHDL, Verilog
Protocols: UART, SPI, I2C, BLE, NFC/HF, LF, OSDP
Debug Tools: Logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, JTAG/SWD debuggers, GDB
Version Control: Git
What Doesn’t Show Up in a Job Description But Matters Most
We’re looking for people who take ownership, ask questions when something doesn’t make sense, and push back when a requirement is wrong rather than just building what they’re told.
Logistics & Compensation
Wavelynx makes access control readers — the hardware and firmware that decide whether a door opens. We’re a PE-backed company scaling fast, and we’re building the engineering team that will take us there. This role is for a senior embedded / firmware engineer who wants to own hard problems in a constrained environment and build things that work reliably in the real world.
You’ll be working on Zephyr RTOS-based firmware for our APEX reader platform — nRF5340 dual-core, BLE, NFC/HF, LF prox, OSDP, and the full stack that sits on top of it. The problems are real: sub-millisecond timing, thread scheduling, protocol compliance, secure boot, power budgets, and manufacturing at volume. If you’ve spent time wondering why a GPIO edge got dropped or whether the UART FIFO overflowed, you’ll fit in.
What You’ll Do
You’ll own features from requirements through production — driver development, subsystem design, integration, debugging, and validation. You’ll write firmware that goes into real products and stays in them for years. You’ll work closely with hardware, software, and manufacturing, which means you need to communicate clearly and write specs that other people can actually use. You’ll also help build the validation infrastructure that gives us confidence before a release ships.
What We’re Looking For
A degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering is strongly preferred. In embedded firmware, the fundamentals matter. That background shows up in how people think about hardware-software interaction, timing, and signal integrity in ways that are hard to replicate otherwise.
Real RTOS experience at the thread and scheduler level — Zephyr or FreeRTOS. Not just the API surface. You should understand priority inversion, preemption, and why getting that wrong causes problems that are very hard to find.
Protocol experience at the driver level. SPI, I2C, UART, BLE — we’re not looking for someone who used a library. We want someone who has read the datasheet, written the driver, and debugged it with a logic analyzer when it didn’t work.
High-volume manufacturing background. If you’ve had to think about production test coverage, manufacturing calibration, firmware provisioning at scale, or what happens when a unit comes back from the field, that experience matters here.
Performance and reliability are hard requirements, not a goal. Experience in storage devices, medical devices, industrial controls, or automotive translates well. These environments force habits that carry into everything you build afterward.
Security fundamentals. Experience with secure boot, firmware signing, key management, or TrustZone is a plus and will become more relevant as we grow.
FPGA programming experience. Experience designing and programming FPGAs using VHDL or Verilog is a strong plus. If you understand how hardware logic intersects with firmware and have worked at that boundary, that background is directly relevant to what we build.
Ability to debug with limited tools. A UART and a logic analyzer should be enough. If you’ve only worked in environments with a full debug suite and a large support team, this role will be a stretch.
You can write. Not prose — technical documentation. Specs, design notes, comments that explain the why, not just the what. We’re building a team that can hand work off and pick it up, and that only works if people write things down.
Skills
Languages: C (primary), Python, C
RTOS / Platforms: Zephyr, FreeRTOS, ARM Cortex-M / Cortex-A
Hardware Description Languages: VHDL, Verilog
Protocols: UART, SPI, I2C, BLE, NFC/HF, LF, OSDP
Debug Tools: Logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, JTAG/SWD debuggers, GDB
Version Control: Git
What Doesn’t Show Up in a Job Description But Matters Most
We’re looking for people who take ownership, ask questions when something doesn’t make sense, and push back when a requirement is wrong rather than just building what they’re told.
Logistics & Compensation
- Location: Broomfield, CO. Hybrid schedule (2-days remote) after the initial 90-day onboarding period.
- Base Annual Salary: $190,000-225,000 plus eligibility for an annual company bonus program and merit increases.
- Retirement: After 30 days, eligible for the company 401(k) program, where you are 100% vested immediately and features up to a 6% 401(k) match.
- Health: Great rates on company-sponsored medical, dental, and vision insurance, with HSA-eligible plans available.
- Growth: We prefer to build talent from within, offering substantial opportunities for cross-collaboration and engineering career advancement, plus a $2,500 educational grant opportunity.
Salary : $190,000 - $225,000