Hardware & Firmware Engineer

About the Mission

We are building the world’s first autonomous kitchen, targeted for launch by July 2027. To achieve this, we are bridging high-level cloud architecture with real-time physical automation—combining smart material handling, precision motion control, and intelligent computer vision into a single culinary engine.

Instead of relying on rigid, off-the-shelf industrial components, we are building a highly agile, custom hardware ecosystem from the ground up to achieve unprecedented flexibility and scale.

The Role

We are seeking a hands-on IoT, Hardware Embedded Systems Engineer to bring our physical autonomous kitchen to life. You will own the low-level hardware communication, motor controls, AGV kinematics, and edge computer vision systems. Operating at the bare-metal and edge-compute levels, you will act as the technical bridge between our physical actuators on the kitchen floor and our cloud ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

- Microcontroller & Edge Architectures: Design and deploy distributed control systems using STM32 microcontrollers for real-time sensor/actuator logic and Raspberry Pi (or similar SBCs) for edge processing and gateway tasks.

- IoT Protocols & Communication: Establish and maintain robust communication pipelines using Modbus (RTU/TCP) to interface with hardware peripherals, and MQTT to stream telemetry and receive commands from cloud brokers.

- AGV & Motion Control: Program and orchestrate Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) for ingredient transport. This includes owning the low-level motion control, managing wheel kinematics, closed-loop PID tuning and trajectory execution.

- Motor Control System Design: Wire, program, and tune servo motors, stepper motors, and BLDC drives directly from custom embedded boards for precise culinary movements and dispensing.

- Computer Vision at the Edge: Implement and optimize edge-based computer vision models (running on Raspberry Pi or specialized edge accelerators) for real-time quality control, ingredient detection, and spatial awareness.

- Prototyping & Bench Testing: Capable of working in the hardware lab to solder, wire, debug, and validate custom PCBs, sensor arrays, and physical kinematic systems.

Required Qualifications

- Degree on Electronics Engineering or equivalent (compulsory)

- Embedded Software & Hardware Experience: 3+ years building custom IoT systems, bridging software with physical hardware, sensors, and actuators.

- Cross-functional Colaboration capable of working in close collaboration with mechanical engineering team;

- Integration and Assembly: electromechanical assembly, enclosure and chassis wiring, cable harnessing and routing, thermal management and industrial waterproof and sealing.

- Microcontroller Mastery: Deep, hands-on experience programming ESP32s (via ESP-IDF, FreeRTOS, or C/C++) and deploying Raspberry Pi clusters for edge computing.

- Protocol Expertise: Proven practical knowledge of Modbus (TCP/RTU) for serial hardware communication and MQTT for IoT messaging. Low level protocol experience: I2C, SPI, SWD, UART.

- Robotics & Motion Control: Strong grasp of motor control (servos, steppers) and AGV motion control (differential drive kinematics, closed-loop feedback, encoder integration).

- Computer Vision: Proficiency with OpenCV, Python, and deploying vision models onto resource-constrained edge platforms.

- Language Proficiency: Strong programming skills in C/C++ (for bare-metal/microcontrollers) and Python (for edge/Raspberry Pi tasks).

Bonus Points If You Have:

- Experience with ROS / ROS2 (Robot Operating System) and micro-ROS for microcontrollers.

- PCB design experience (KiCad, Altium) to spin up custom carrier boards for ESP32/Compute Modules.

- Experience with edge containerization (Docker).

Why Join Us?

- Agile, Custom Hardware: Leave the clunky, traditional industrial logic behind. You’ll be building nimble, modern, and highly scalable hardware solutions using today's best IoT microcontrollers.

- Watch Your Code Move: See your C++ and Python directly drive real-world mechanics, AGV navigation, and robotic food assembly in real-time.

- End-to-End Ownership: Take full ownership of the embedded execution layer leading up to our massive July 2027 launch.

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