Sr. Embedded Firmware Engineer, Robotics
Amazon · Sunnyvale, California, USA ·
- Seniority
- Senior
- Category
- Embedded
Amazon is seeking exceptional talent to help develop the next generation of advanced robotics systems that will transform automation at Amazon's scale. We're building revolutionary robotic systems that combine AI, sophisticated control systems, and advanced electromechanical design to create adaptable automation solutions capable of working safely alongside humans in dynamic environments. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of robotics and automation at an unprecedented scale, working with world-class teams pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotic manipulation.
Amazon is seeking a talented and motivated Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer to design, implement, and launch firmware for highly dexterous robotic end effectors. In this role you will own firmware sub-domains independently. The ideal candidate has extensive experience writing firmware to process a wide variety of sensors, control electric motors, and communicate with the larger system, and can work well both independently and in a multidisciplinary team setting.
Key job responsibilities
- Drive communication interface integration at the firmware layer, ensuring robust, deterministic communication between the end effector and the larger robotic system.
- Review vendor firmware deliverables, provide technical direction, and hold vendors to Amazon's quality, coding, and integration standards.
- Author functional requirements, design verification plans, and test procedures; execute designs that meet those requirements.
- Build and test firmware for electromechanical subsystem prototypes and integrated systems, covering sensor processing, motor control, and system communication.
- Support product releases to manufacturing and customer deployments, including production firmware bring-up and validation, working efficiently to support fast-paced development schedules.
A day in the life
Your morning starts with a new sensor module on your desk: the latest prototype from a manufacturing partner overseas. You jump on a call with the vendor's engineering team to walk through their test results, flag an issue you spotted in the data, and agree on a firmware fix they'll turn around overnight. Getting fast iteration cycles on hardware is how this team operates: you don't wait for perfect specs, you get hardware moving and learn from what it tells you.
By mid-morning you're designing the control interface for the end effector: defining how it talks to the rest of the system, what data it exposes, and how it fits into the real-time communication architecture. You sketch the firmware-side changes, then switch to the simulation environment to update the corresponding ROS model so the controls engineer you're working with can test policies against it before hardware arrives. Making things work in sim and on your dev kit in the same day is normal here: the hardware hasn't shipped yet, but that doesn't stop you.
After lunch you pick up a code review from another team. They're building the actuator control framework that your end effector integrates with, and their latest change surfaces a new set of requirements you hadn't considered. You leave substantive feedback, and it reshapes how you're thinking about your own interface design.
You close the day with a quick chat with a teammate on the mechanical design side who's working on a physical sensor model. They want help writing custom firmware to characterize the sim-to-real gap, and you realize it connects directly to the simulation change you made that morning. What started as two separate threads becomes a collaboration. You open a shared design doc and start outlining the approach together.
About the team
We're developing next-generation robotic manipulation capabilities for highly dexterous multi-finger grippers and hands. Our firmware work spans motor control, sensor processing, tactile sensing production firmware, and the tight integration of the robotic end effector with the larger robotic platform. We build the embedded systems that bring capable, reliable robotic hardware to life.
Amazon is seeking a talented and motivated Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer to design, implement, and launch firmware for highly dexterous robotic end effectors. In this role you will own firmware sub-domains independently. The ideal candidate has extensive experience writing firmware to process a wide variety of sensors, control electric motors, and communicate with the larger system, and can work well both independently and in a multidisciplinary team setting.
Key job responsibilities
- Drive communication interface integration at the firmware layer, ensuring robust, deterministic communication between the end effector and the larger robotic system.
- Review vendor firmware deliverables, provide technical direction, and hold vendors to Amazon's quality, coding, and integration standards.
- Author functional requirements, design verification plans, and test procedures; execute designs that meet those requirements.
- Build and test firmware for electromechanical subsystem prototypes and integrated systems, covering sensor processing, motor control, and system communication.
- Support product releases to manufacturing and customer deployments, including production firmware bring-up and validation, working efficiently to support fast-paced development schedules.
A day in the life
Your morning starts with a new sensor module on your desk: the latest prototype from a manufacturing partner overseas. You jump on a call with the vendor's engineering team to walk through their test results, flag an issue you spotted in the data, and agree on a firmware fix they'll turn around overnight. Getting fast iteration cycles on hardware is how this team operates: you don't wait for perfect specs, you get hardware moving and learn from what it tells you.
By mid-morning you're designing the control interface for the end effector: defining how it talks to the rest of the system, what data it exposes, and how it fits into the real-time communication architecture. You sketch the firmware-side changes, then switch to the simulation environment to update the corresponding ROS model so the controls engineer you're working with can test policies against it before hardware arrives. Making things work in sim and on your dev kit in the same day is normal here: the hardware hasn't shipped yet, but that doesn't stop you.
After lunch you pick up a code review from another team. They're building the actuator control framework that your end effector integrates with, and their latest change surfaces a new set of requirements you hadn't considered. You leave substantive feedback, and it reshapes how you're thinking about your own interface design.
You close the day with a quick chat with a teammate on the mechanical design side who's working on a physical sensor model. They want help writing custom firmware to characterize the sim-to-real gap, and you realize it connects directly to the simulation change you made that morning. What started as two separate threads becomes a collaboration. You open a shared design doc and start outlining the approach together.
About the team
We're developing next-generation robotic manipulation capabilities for highly dexterous multi-finger grippers and hands. Our firmware work spans motor control, sensor processing, tactile sensing production firmware, and the tight integration of the robotic end effector with the larger robotic platform. We build the embedded systems that bring capable, reliable robotic hardware to life.