Lead Firmware Engineer

Lead Firmware Engineer — Embedded Controls

Wisconsin | Direct Hire | Up to ~$136K total comp + relocation assistance + signing bonus

Lead the firmware. Own the architecture. Build the team behind it.

We're hiring a senior firmware engineer ready to step into a technical leadership seat at the world's largest manufacturer in its category. 100+ years of engineering, recently IPO'd, and growing. This role exists because the product development team is expanding, and they need someone who can both ship firmware and lead the engineers shipping it with them.

What you'd own:

• Firmware architecture for the control boards at the core of every product: full-lifecycle C, low-level drivers, bootloaders, comms stacks, real-time and motor control
• Technical leadership of a small team of firmware engineers: mentoring, code review, design direction, and raising the bar
• Real authority on MCU and component selection, platform decisions, and how firmware gets built
• Bench work that stays on your desk: JTAG/SWD, scopes, logic analyzers. This is a leading-from-the-code seat, not a meetings seat.

Why this seat is different:

Most senior firmware roles cap out as "senior IC forever." This one is the path up. The hiring manager came through these exact ranks over 16 years. The team is long-tenured, the company doesn't do layoffs-and-backfills, and your firmware ships inside products used every day in 150 countries.

The practical stuff:

• $102K–$126K base + 8% bonus (~$136K total with flexibility for the right candidate), relocation assistance + signing bonus
• East-central Wisconsin: low cost of living, real lab, zero commute misery
• Onsite, because leading a bench team happens at the bench
• Direct hire, full benefits

You'll need:

• 8+ years embedded firmware in C, with production bare-metal and/or RTOS (FreeRTOS a plus)
• Experience mentoring or leading engineers, formally or as the senior person people came to
• CAN/Modbus, bootloaders, or motor control depth strongly preferred
• U.S. Citizenship or Green Card (no sponsorship)

If you've been the strongest engineer in the room waiting for the title and the team to match, this is that role.