About the role
Reporting to the Head of Software, you will be embedded into the Advanced Development Team, designing and architecting the firmware foundations of next-generation electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) payloads. This includes defining firmware architecture across multiple microcontrollers and system components, developing drivers and control software, maintaining bootloaders and interfaces, and making the design decisions that allow complex embedded systems to operate reliably in the field.
You will be trusted with real ownership from the first week.
About you
You are an embedded engineer who enjoys working from system-level architecture down to the code that sits closest to the hardware. You are fluent in C with Rust experience or a strong interest in using it for embedded systems, and you understand what the hardware is actually doing underneath your code — registers, interrupts, DMA, clocks, timing, communications and system interfaces.
You debug methodically. When something misbehaves only at -20°C, only under vibration, or only once every six hours, you do not guess — you instrument, isolate and prove. You treat determinism, safety and testability as design requirements, not afterthoughts.
You work comfortably across firmware, electronics and higher-level software boundaries. You can operate as the most senior specialised firmware engineer in the team, taking ownership of firmware architecture, toolchain and design decisions without relying on a dedicated firmware mentor. You communicate clearly with electronics engineers, document your decisions and are energised by a high-growth environment where what you build today is in a customer's hands tomorrow.
Key responsibilities
Firmware Design & Development
- Embedded Firmware: Design, architect, implement and maintain production-grade firmware for multi-microcontroller and SoC-based systems across ARM Cortex-M/R and related platforms. Define clear software boundaries, interfaces, timing requirements and failure-handling strategies across the system.
- Drivers & Interfaces: Develop and optimise drivers for sensors, imagers, IMUs, motor drivers and communications interfaces (SPI, I²C, UART, CAN, Ethernet, MIPI CSI-2, USB), while defining the interfaces and abstractions that allow multiple firmware components and processors to work together reliably.
- System-Level Control & Timing: Design deterministic, low-latency control and data paths — including stabilisation, pointing and motor control loops — with clear timing budgets, interrupt strategies, resource constraints and failure modes.
- Boot & Update: Build and maintain bootloaders, secure boot chains and robust field-update mechanisms (A/B images, signing, rollback) for units deployed beyond physical reach.
- System Architecture & Integration: Define firmware architecture across multiple microcontrollers, embedded Linux companion compute on edge hardware. Make architectural trade-offs around processing, communications, timing, memory, reliability, testability and maintainability.
Hardware Collaboration & System Integration
- Hardware Collaboration: Work closely with Electronics Engineers during board design and bring-up, contributing firmware expertise to schematics reviews, interfaces, pin allocation, power sequencing and design reviews. You will collaborate and consult rather than own the electronics bring-up process.
- Lab Debugging & Design Consultation: Diagnose complex hardware/firmware interactions using oscilloscopes, logic analysers, JTAG/SWD debuggers and trace tools, and use those findings to inform system-level design and architecture decisions.
- Design Reviews & Tooling: Contribute to the selection of firmware development, debugging, build and test tools, and provide specialist firmware input into design reviews and technical decisions.
Quality, Testing & Compliance
- Test Automation: Write unit tests, on-target tests and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests, and contribute to CI/CD pipelines tailored for secure, air-gapped embedded environments.
- Code Quality: Apply coding standards, static analysis, peer review and strict configuration management to keep every release traceable and auditable.
- Documentation: Produce clear design notes, interface control documents and release notes that support AS9100 quality processes and customer acceptance.
- Security & Export Control: Handle all technical data in line with defence data-security protocols, export controls (ITAR/EAR/DECO) and cybersecurity requirements (DISP).
Ownership & Team Contribution
- Field Issue Resolution: Investigate field-reported issues end-to-end, from system-level reproduction and root cause through to architectural changes, verified fixes and release.
- Technical Ownership: Act as the senior specialised firmware resource within the team, setting firmware standards, making architecture and tooling decisions, and providing technical guidance and design consultation across projects.
What success looks like
In your first 90 days:
- You have built and flashed every active firmware target, understand the architecture of at least one product line end-to-end, and know where the bodies are buried.
- You have shipped a meaningful fix or feature to a product or prototype, through review, test and release.
- You have contributed to board and sensor bring-up, worked closely with Electronics, and demonstrated your ability to diagnose hardware/firmware interactions and feed those learnings back into system design.
In your first year:
- You own a significant firmware subsystem — such as a control loop, sensor interface, or the boot and update chain — and you are the go-to engineer for it.
- Your work has measurably improved field reliability, test coverage or HIL automation.
- Customers and internal teams trust your firmware releases because they are predictable, traceable and boringly stable.
- You are actively shaping firmware standards, system architecture and design decisions across the department.
Your experience and skills
- Firmware Track Record: 5+ years of professional embedded firmware development, with strong experience designing and architecting complex embedded systems. Experience in aerospace, defence, robotics, automotive, medical or another safety- or mission-critical domain is highly desirable.
- Languages: Strong C for embedded systems. Rust experience is highly regarded. Python for tooling and test automation.
- Multi-Microcontroller Systems: Essential experience designing and developing firmware across systems with multiple microcontrollers, including defining inter-processor communications, interfaces, timing and responsibilities between processors.
- Hardware Fluency: Comfortable reading schematics and datasheets and using lab equipment to debug at the signal level. Experience collaborating with electronics engineers through board design and bring-up is important, but you will not be the primary owner of electronics bring-up.
- Boot & Security (essential): Strong hands-on experience mantaining and developing bootloaders and robust firmware update mechanisms. Experience with secure boot, cryptographic image signing or field-update systems is highly desirable.
- Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing (essential): Demonstrated experience designing or working with hardware-in-the-loop test environments and using them to validate complex firmware behaviour and system-level interactions.
- Engineering Discipline: Git, code review, CI pipelines, static analysis, automated testing and structured design reviews are part of how you work, not extras.
- Clearance: Must hold, or be eligible to obtain, an Australian Government Baseline security clearance, and be able to work with export-controlled technical data.
- Comfort with Ambiguity: You can make good decisions with incomplete information, take ownership of architecture and technical direction, and adjust quickly when the picture changes.
Why join Arkeus
- You will work on the hardest problems in deep-tech — optics, autonomy, real-time AI and hardware-software integration in a single product. The gap betwen what you build and where it ends up is almost nonexistent.
- You will collaborate with exceptional leaders who have decades of combined experience in AI, optics and defence. You will be learning from — and contributing to — the best in the field.
- You will become part of a close-knit, ego-free team where ideas compete on merit, not seniority. Low politics, high trust. The kind of team you will still be talking about in ten years.
- You will work hard and be expected to bring your best — and in return you will grow faster than you ever would at a large organisation.
- You will work on technology that is already deployed in real environments — protecting lives and strengthening security across defence and national security applications.
- You will receive a competitive, market-benchmarked salary, structured career pathays built to grow with you, and the opportunity to participate in our Employee Share Option Plan (ESOP).
- You will have the opportunity to mentor bright emerging talent through our highly sought-after intern program and strong connections with leading universities.
If this sounds like you, please apply even if you don't check every box — we care more about how you think than whether your CV is perfect. Join our growing team and help us change the world through autonomous systems.