Job Description Most firmware jobs ask you to keep the lights on. This one asks you to push the limits of what silicon can actually do . You’ll be joining a small, senior-heavy engineering group building next-generation embedded systems where every microamp, every cycle and every byte matters. It’s the kind of work where you can’t hide behind abstraction — you’re operating close to the metal, solving problems that don’t have a Stack Overflow answer, and shaping the behaviour of hardware that didn’t exist a few years ago. If you want to work somewhere that feels like an engineering lab rather than a product maintenance shop, read on. What you’ll be doing Building and optimising firmware in C for constrained, real-time systems Working across RTOS internals : bootloaders, startup code, scheduling, drivers, interrupts, DMA Bringing up new boards and SoCs on ARM Cortex or RISC-V architectures Writing deterministic, testable code for SPI, I²C, SDIO and other hardware interfaces Solving real engineering puzzles — performance, memory, timing, data movement Collaborating with silicon, digital, systems and hardware engineers to debug cross-layer issues Owning problems end-to-end: from concept to design, implementation and validation on real hardware What they’re looking for You’re someone who enjoys thinking deeply about how things work under the hood — not just writing code that compiles, but code that is predictable, efficient and clear. You’ll thrive here if you have: 5 years in embedded firmware development using C Experience with FreeRTOS, RT-Thread, ThreadX, Zephyr or a similar RTOS Hands-on bring-up of ARM Cortex or RISC-V systems Strong familiarity with interrupt handlers, DMA, low-level drivers and timing constraints Solid knowledge of SPI, I²C, SDIO and related protocols The ability to reason about state machines, data structures and algorithmic complexity — you care about correctness as much as functionality A degree in EE/CE/Comms/CS or equivalent practical depth Bonus points (not required): Experience with secure embedded systems or networking stacks Firmware for complex SoCs or semiconductor environments Why this team stands out Because they’ve built the kind of engineering environment people don’t leave easily. Real engineering culture. Hard problems, not maintenance work. You get space to think. Potential visa sponsorship relocation support if you’re coming from overseas and are eligible for a working holiday visa. Work from anywhere in the world for 10 days a year Little things that actually make a difference like f ree barista-made coffee every day (yes, the proper stuff — and yes, it really does save you ~$1,500 a year). The team’s average tenure is 3 years, which is unusually strong for a deep-tech company of 200 employees in Australia. If you’re the kind of firmware engineer who likes solving hard problems, not repeating easy ones, let’s talk. Reach out to Thaís Amorim at The Onset: thais@theonset.com.au .
