Staff Software Engineer | Embedded Systems

Batteries have a big role to play in tackling the climate crisis, and it’s essential to make sure that they’re safe and reliable to operate.

At Zitara (YCombinator S20), we build cutting-edge software solutions that empower companies to deeply understand their batteries, both in design and deployment. It’s all part of our work to enable a renewable energy revolution, powered by safer batteries, at a lower cost, with less waste. Our customers operate >$100M deployments of batteries in satellites, EVs, and renewable energy storage installations.

Our team brings top researchers in physics-based battery algorithms together with seasoned software engineers to build safety-critical firmware and large scale machine learning systems. We bring with us decades of experience from companies like Tesla, Cruise, and Google.

Role

The Embedded Systems team is responsible for developing and delivering Zitara Live, our industry-leading software package to deliver adaptive controls software onboard batteries across EV, aerospace, IoT, utility-scale storage applications, and beyond. Zitara Live algorithms are powered by Zitara's proprietary battery models, which apply advanced numerical methods to provide precise, actionable battery insight. 

Zitara Live serves a broad range of customers operating across diverse platforms, from small embedded microcontrollers to full POSIX server systems, while meeting high-assurance guarantees and hard real-time requirements. Our work supports flexibility, efficiency, and robustness, and spans all phases of the software lifecycle across algorithm implementation, verification and testing, application packaging for distribution, and incorporating customer feedback.

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Embedded Systems team. In this role you will architect and implement complex algorithmic firmware and systems-level software; design and create solutions to make core functionality available across a variety of systems and platforms; and provide guidance on the practical realities of delivering real-time software to multiple customers.

The nature of Zitara Live as a product that supplies capability to our customers’ systems means that our work spans the full range of the software/firmware stack, from bare-metal embedded contexts all the way up to distributed server-based applications. Success in this role can take several forms, and we are interested in candidates with deep domain expertise as well as candidates with a broad experience base.

Responsibilities

• Understand complex problems across multiple disciplines and apply software engineering methodology to attack them.

• Architect and Implement software to meet high-assurance and reliability requirements in portable C

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate new product features and evaluate customer requirements.

• Collaborate with project and product management to scope and schedule work to meet customer needs.

• Create testing and verification frameworks to characterize performance and correctness across multiple targets.

• Proactively identify opportunities for product functionality, development process, and team function.

• Develop applications and systems to package and distribute the Zitara Live product to customers.

• Generate concise customer-facing documentation and reference materials.

• Provide mentorship and guidance to junior engineers.

Qualifications

• Bachelors in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent.

• 6+ years experience in industry software development in systems level C.

• Creative problem solving to meet customer needs under limited resource and engineering constraints.

• Track record of technical leadership and product ownership.

• Experience shipping an embedded product to customers.

• Strong product mindset with experience meeting customer needs.

• Demonstrated ability to lead the development of complex software/firmware systems.

• Experience with embedded toolchains and build systems.

• Familiarity with basic git workflows for collaborative software development.

• Clear and effective written and interpersonal communication skills.

Bonus Qualifications

• Familiarity with battery or energy systems applications.

• Familiarity with analog sensing and signals.

• Experience with test-driven development for embedded systems and hardware-in-the-loop testing.

• Practical knowledge of digital signal protocols such as I2C, SPI, and CAN.

• Practical knowledge of network messaging protocols, such as MQTT or otherwise.

• Experience with Rust.

• Experience with Bazel.

• Working knowledge of control systems (eg PID control or state estimation).

• Knowledge of numerical methods and pitfalls with floating point math.

• Experience in high assurance systems development (eg, ISO26262 or DO178).

What We Offer

• A full-time position, working from our office in San Francisco, CA or remotely.

• Salary range $170,000 to $220,000 annual base.

• Health, Dental, and Vision care for you and your family.

• A 401k savings plan.

• “Unlimited PTO” vacation policy.

• Excellent colleagues that are interested in your happiness and growth.

Zitara is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. Reports from LinkedIn and Hewlett Packard indicate that women are less likely to apply for positions due to perceived mismatches with listed qualifications. It's reasonable that this phenomenon extends to other underrepresented groups too. If you think you have what it takes but don't necessarily meet every single point listed, please apply - you could be exactly who we are looking for!