Staff Embedded Firmware Engineer - NEO

ABOUT 1X

We’re building humanoid robots that work in home - doing the chores, handling the tasks, and giving people their time back. Simple, but it’s not.

To do this right, we have to solve robotics, AI, manufacturing - at the same time, at scale, in a form factor that has to be safe enough to live with your family. If you’re inspired by this, you’ll thrive here. We’ve been at this since 2014 and we’re at the point where the hard problems are behind us and the hard work is in front of us.

NEO is our flagship - a home robot designed to move, learn, and operate in the real world alongside real people. We’re not demoing it - we’re shipping it. We’re excited to meet you, if this excites you.

If you’ve spent your career working on problems that matter and want to see them actually reach the world - this is that moment. We’re scaling, we’re hiring with intention, and we need people who want to build something that will genuinely change how humans spend their time - safely creating abundance for all.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The Firmware team owns the embedded software layer that powers every hardware subsystem of our humanoid robot from distributed communication bus architecture and power management to actuator and motor drive control. We sit at the intersection of hardware and software, and our work is directly on the critical path to every product milestone: without reliable firmware, the robot cannot move, charge, or operate safely. If you want to build the foundational software for a new category of physical AI, this is where that work happens.

YOUR CHARTER

Own the firmware layer across one or more of the robot’s core hardware subsystems—ensuring embedded software that is robust, safe, and maintainable across prototype and production platforms. As one of the first companies building general-purpose humanoid robots at scale, firmware quality is non-negotiable: it determines whether the robot operates safely in uncontrolled environments, whether hardware brings up on schedule, and whether the team can move fast as the system grows to 20+ distributed embedded nodes.

KEY OUTCOMES

- Deliver production-quality firmware for your assigned domain; communication bus, battery charging, or actuator drives that meets reliability and safety requirements on both prototype and production hardware

- Reduce integration risk across subsystems by owning the firmware-to-hardware interface: defining requirements with hardware architects, surfacing trade-offs early, and resolving issues before they block downstream teams

- Establish diagnostic and telemetry infrastructure that measurably accelerates end-of-line validation and enables long-term field reliability tracking

- Contribute to a firmware codebase that is well-structured, documented, and maintainable, enabling the team to scale safely as the robot adds nodes, subsystems, and production volume

KEY COMPETENCIES

- Deep embedded instincts writing firmware that is correct under real hardware conditions: interrupt timing, DMA conflicts, communication protocol edge cases, and hardware fault behavior

- First-principles problem solver diagnosing novel failures at the firmware-hardware boundary using lab tools and reasoning from fundamentals, not just vendor documentation or established patterns

- Safety-aware by default understanding what “fail safe” means in a physical system and treats protection logic, fault detection, and safe-state transitions as first-class firmware concerns

- Effective cross-functional partner translating firmware constraints and failure modes clearly to hardware architects, electrical engineers, and systems engineers; supports bring-up without waiting to be directed

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

- 5+ years of embedded firmware development in C/C++ on real hardware, with direct experience managing interrupts, DMA, and timing-critical execution (7+ years for senior/staff-level positions)

- Hands-on experience with microcontrollers and embedded communication inter …