Firmware Engineer

at  Liquid Robotics a Boeing Company

FIRMWARE ENGINEER

At Liquid Robotics, we make the most experienced ocean surface robot on the planet. Our Wave Glider platform services a wide range of missions, whether it’s acting in partnership with environmental institutes to monitor oil spills or supporting a nation’s sovereignty by listening for submarines deep within the ocean, these rugged uncrewed surface vessels have been deployed in high sea states in the North Sea, hurricanes, or tropical storms, for more than 10 years.
Liquid Robotics is seeking a Firmware Engineer. This person will be responsible for embedded development activities on various internal and customer projects at Liquid Robotics. Key activities will include analyzing and creating firmware requirements, researching and prototyping solutions, hands-on code development and developing embedded code, creation and execution of test procedures for firmware in a cross functional, highly engaged environment. The Firmware Engineer will report to the Hardware Engineering Manager. This role will be located in our Herndon, VA headquarters.
Responsibilities

Job duties will include:

• Analysis and creation of requirements for embedded systems
• Creation and execution of test procedures to validate design meets requirements
• Research and rapid-prototype embedded systems concepts
• Design, implement, and test firmware; create test benches and run simulations to verify requirement compliance and exercise design.
• Review and accept firmware delivered by subcontractors and providers, integrate and support.
• Document firmware design and implementation, support peer reviews and gate reviews.
• Assist hardware team in selection and assessment of new hardware, work with hardware designers during development at test phase

• Support software team in definition of software interfaces, design the integration of sensors/embedded systems into the greater system

  Minimum Qualifications:

• BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or a related field.

• Five+ years of experience in embedded firmware development.
• Experience with FPGA architectures (Lattice/Xilinx) and their associated development tools (Diamond, Vivado, etc.) with experience developing in VHDL.
• Working knowledge of ARM architecture and typical hardware interfaces such as I2C, CANbus, UART, TCP/IP.
• Knowledge of thread synchronization techniques, including mutexes and semaphores.
• Experience optimizing for ultra-low power computing environments
• Able to establish and configure hardware test environment for prototyping and development.
• Familiarity with post-build scripting for release images.
• Able to work with common lab equipment, for example logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, and power supplies.

Preferred Skills:

• Familiarity with STM32 products and development environments
• Experience with optimization of software/firmware for power consumption
• Experience with FreeRTOS or other similar embedded operating systems

• An exceptional candidate would have development experience using Open Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (OpenAUV) software architecture, including payload controller extensible (PCX) modular open architecture.

  Liquid Robotics designs and manufactures Wave Gliders®, the world’s first wave and solar powered autonomous ocean robots. With partners, they address challenges facing defense, Oil & Gas, commercial and science customers by making ocean data collections and communications easier safer and in real-time. Liquid Robotics was acquired by Boeing in December of 2016 and operates as an independent non-integrated subsidiary.
  For more info, please visit www.liquid-robotics.com

• Analysis and creation of requirements for embedded systems
• Creation and execution of test procedures to validate design meets requirements
• Research and rapid-prototype embedded systems concepts
• Design, implement, and test firmware; create test benches and run simulations to verify requirement compliance and exercise design.
• Review and accept firmware delivered by subcontractors and providers, integrate and support.
• Document firmware design and implementation, support peer reviews and gate reviews.
• Assist hardware team in selection and assessment of new hardware, work with hardware designers during development at test phase
• Support software team in definition of software interfaces, design the integration of sensors/embedded systems into the greater syste