Job Summary

Seeking an experienced Senior MCU Firmware Engineer to own both microcontroller firmware domains of our next-generation embedded writer platform: the bare-metal firmware for a high-rate sensor-scanning keyboard subsystem — the hard-real-time heart of the device — and the always-on, low-power companion domain that remains active while the main applications processor is suspended. The selected candidate will design and implement microsecond-accurate sensor scanning, event timestamping, mechanical actuator control, and sensor calibration on a dedicated microcontroller, and will develop firmware for a low-power companion processor core driving an always-on status display, wake-trigger detection, battery monitoring, and system wake/sleep orchestration. Work is expected to phase — keyboard subsystem bring-up first, always-on domain second — but ownership of both domains is permanent and the full scope of each applies.

This role requires strong hard-real-time firmware discipline, mixed-signal hardware fluency, strong low-power design instincts, comfort across a heterogeneous multi-core system, and the ability to prove determinism and power behavior with instrumentation, not argument.

Key Responsibilities

- Design and implement timer-triggered, DMA-driven analog sensor scanning across a large sensor array, with microsecond-accurate event timestamping.
- Implement full simultaneous multi-input event capture and encoding for downstream transmission.
- Design and implement a CRC-framed serial slave protocol for communicating scanned events and configuration to the main applications processor.
- Design and implement multi-zone mechanical actuator drive (PWM-based, with soft-start/stagger sequencing) for haptic or force-feedback output.
- Design and implement a sensor-to-actuator calibration system: baseline capture, per-position profiles, and safe masking during calibration/adjustment, validated on a bench test rig.
- Provide firmware direction for a follow-on hardware revision, including any new sensing front-end technology under evaluation.
- Develop firmware for a low-power companion processor core that must run continuously from on-chip low-latency memory through the main processor's suspend state.
- Drive an always-on low-power display, including continuous low-rate refresh signaling.




- Implement a digital microphone front-end pipeline for wake-trigger/voice-activity detection.
- Implement battery/fuel-gauge polling and expose state to the rest of the system.
- Design and implement wake/sleep orchestration logic in coordination with the platform firmware team, including transition timing and shared-resource ownership between processor cores.
- Implement inter-processor messaging between the low-power domain and the main applications processor.
- Own resource-partitioning decisions (memory, peripherals, interrupts) for the always-on domain in coordination with platform engineering.
- Collaborate closely with electrical engineering on sensor/actuator circuit behavior and with platform engineering across both firmware domains.
- Build and use bench validation tooling (oscilloscope/logic-analyzer driven) to demonstrate and document real-time determinism, and validate low-power behavior against a system-level power budget.
- Participate in design and code review with particular attention to timing correctness, mechanical safety, power-state correctness, and wake-latency behavior.
- Utilize modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate development and test authoring, while applying independent engineering judgment and verification rather than trusting generated output at face value.
- Support the product from early hardware bring-up through production release.

Required Qualifications

- Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- 5+ years of professional bare-metal and/or RTOS-based microcontroller firmware development.
- Mastery of microcontroller ADC, DMA, and timer peripherals for high-rate, precisely-timed data acquisition.
- Demonstrated hard-real-time firmware discipline, with the ability to prove determinism using bench instrumentation (oscilloscope, logic analyzer) rather than analysis alone.
- Mixed-signal hardware comfort:



analog sensor interfacing and motor/actuator driver circuits.
- Experience designing serial communication protocols (framing, CRC/checksums) between a microcontroller and a host processor.
- Experience with heterogeneous multi-core SoC firmware, including coexistence and coordination between a main applications processor core and a low-power companion core.
- Experience with inter-processor communication mechanisms in a heterogeneous SoC.
- Robust low-power design instincts: sleep/retention states, current-budget-driven design trade-offs, wake-latency optimization.
- Experience with at least one embedded RTOS (e.g., ThreadX, FreeRTOS, Zephyr, or similar).
- Demonstrated, hands-on effectiveness with AI-assisted software engineering tools (agentic coding assistants, AI-based code review), with clear judgment about when to trust generated output and when it requires independent verification.
- Excellent troubleshooting and debugging skills at the hardware/firmware boundary.
- Experience using Git for version control and standard issue-tracking tools for project/task management.

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience with keyboard, HID, or other high-rate sensor-scanning consumer/pro hardware.
- Motor control or haptic actuator drive experience.
- Experience with magnetic (Hall-effect) or other non-contact position-sensing technologies.
- Prior experience specifically with a commercial applications-processor family that includes an integrated low-power companion core.
- Basic audio/DSP experience (voice-activity detection, simple digital filtering).
- Experience with always-on/low-power display technologies.
- Prior RTOS product experience that transfers well to an always-on, resource-constrained environment.
- Experience working in Agile development environments.

Required Skills

- AI-Assisted Software Development
- Bare-Metal / RTOS Microcontroller Firmware
- ADC / DMA / Timer Peripheral Programming
- Hard Real-Time System Design
- Mixed-Signal Hardware Interfacing
- Serial Protocol Design (CRC/Framing)
- Motor/Actuator Control
- Heterogeneous Multi-Core SoC Firmware
- Low-Power / Always-On System Design
- Inter-Processor Communication
- Power-State & Wake/Sleep Orchestration
- Basic Audio/DSP Front-End Processing
- Bench Instrumentation & Validation
- Git
- Debugging & Troubleshooting

📌 Senior MCU Firmware Engineer — Keyboard/Sensor & Always-On/Low-Power Domains (Chennai)
🏢 NeuraNx.ai
📍 Chennai