Senior Embedded DSP & SoC Engineer — RF Sensing Systems | Founding Team Opportunity + Equity

Senior Embedded DSP & SoC Engineer — RF Sensing Systems | Founding Team Opportunity + Equity

About the job

Zephyrs Ai | Pasadena, CA | On-site

| Remote |

Full-time

| Part-time

About Zephyrs Ai

Zephyrs Ai builds precision positioning and navigation technology for autonomous systems operating where GPS may be jammed, spoofed, degraded, or unavailable.

We are a founder-led, early-stage hardware company building real products for autonomous, aerospace, and advanced mobility applications. We keep the team deliberately small and give strong engineers substantial technical ownership.

Detailed product architecture is shared with candidates as the interview process advances.

The Role

We are looking for a strong

embedded DSP / firmware engineer

who wants to grow into broad ownership of a high-performance sensing platform.

This is not a narrow application-software role.

You will work close to the hardware, starting around the

HAL, device drivers, board interfaces, and RF front-end control

, and extending upward into real-time DSP integration, system control, embedded platform software, and customer-facing interfaces.

You do

not

need to already be an expert in every layer.

We care more about strong fundamentals, hands-on ability, and your ability to learn and take ownership of increasingly larger parts of the system.

For the right engineer, this role can grow into technical leadership of the embedded platform.

What You Will Work On

• Embedded C/C++ development on a heterogeneous Arm + DSP SoC

• HAL, BSP, device drivers, memory, clocks, peripherals, DMA, and board-level interfaces

• Board bring-up and debugging of new hardware

• SPI/I2C control of RF, mixed-signal, and sensing devices

• Configuration and control of an advanced RF/mmWave front end

• Integration of real-time DSP and signal-processing components

• Inter-processor communication between Arm and DSP cores

• Real-time state machines, tracking logic, control loops, fault handling, and recovery

• Embedded Linux and/or RTOS platform software

• Data acquisition, logging, test interfaces, and system diagnostics

• Host, vehicle, and autopilot integration interfaces

• Hardware-in-the-loop testing and performance characterization

• Production and calibration software as the product moves toward deployment

• Engineering documentation, source control, build systems, and release processes

As the team grows, strong performers can take increasing ownership of the complete embedded sensing platform.

What We Are Looking For

3+ years of relevant hands-on experience; 5+ years preferred.

You should have strong experience in several of the following areas — we do not expect one candidate to have all of them

:

• Embedded C/C++ development on production hardware

• Bare-metal, RTOS, and/or embedded Linux development

• HAL, BSP, firmware, or low-level driver development

• ARM, DSP, MCU, FPGA-based, or heterogeneous SoC platforms

• Real-time digital signal processing

• Board bring-up and hardware/software integration

• SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet, or other embedded interfaces

• DMA, interrupts, memory management, timing, and latency optimization

• Working with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, JTAG, or similar debugging tools

• Python or MATLAB for test, modeling, data analysis, or algorithm evaluation

Most importantly, you should be comfortable moving between

software, firmware, hardware behavior, and real measurement data

when debugging a system.

Especially Valuable Experience

Experience in any of the following is highly valuable, but

not required

:

• Radar, wireless communications, SDR, sonar, or precision sensing

• mmWave systems

• RF or mixed-signal transceiver control

• Phased arrays or beamforming

• AoA / DoA estimation

• Correlation, matched filtering, synchronization, or channel estimation

• Range, phase, frequency, or timing estimation

• Kalman filtering, tracking, sensor fusion, or state estimation

• Wireless or radar baseband processing

• Fixed-point DSP and vector-DSP optimization

• NXP Layerscape Access, LA-series, VSPA, S32R, TI DSP, Qualcomm modem/PHY, or similar platforms

• FPGA or RTL development

• Robotics or autonomous systems

• PX4, ArduPilot, or MAVLink

• Hardware-in-the-loop testing

• Production calibration systems

• Aerospace, defense, semiconductor, automotive radar, robotics, or medical-device development

The Engineer We Want

We are particularly interested in engineers who can say:

“I may not know every part of this system today, but I know how to get from the hardware to working software, understand what is happening at the signal level, and keep taking ownership until the system works.”

You should enjoy debugging difficult problems, reading datasheets and schematics, working directly with hardware, and turning incomplete specifications into a functioning product.

We value builders over narrow specialists.

Education

B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Applied Physics, Robotics, or a related field is welcome.

Equivalent hands-on industry experience is equally valued.

Work Authorization

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future visa sponsorship from Zephyrs Ai.

Certain projects may involve technology subject to U.S. export-control requirements. Eligibility to access such technology will be evaluated based on the requirements of the specific work involved.

Why Join

You will join at a stage where an individual engineer can still have a major influence on the architecture and product.

Rather than owning one small software component, you will have the opportunity to understand and eventually own a significant portion of the system — from hardware interfaces and real-time processing to the behavior customers ultimately depend on.

• • • If you enjoy building real systems and want more ownership than a large organization normally gives you, we would like to hear from you.