Staff Embedded Engineer (npi Tech Lead)

Whoop Whoop · Consumer · Boston, MA · Software

Staff Embedded Engineer at WHOOP responsible for technical leadership, architectural ownership, and driving cross-functional initiatives for firmware platforms in consumer electronic devices. Focuses on designing, developing, and testing embedded firmware in C, optimizing for power efficiency, stability, and reliability, and influencing hardware and manufacturing roadmaps. The role also involves mentoring engineers and defining testing and CI strategies.

What you'd actually do

  1. Provide technical leadership and architectural ownership for firmware platforms and system-level components used across one or more WHOOP product lines.
  2. Design, develop, and test embedded firmware in C, contributing hands-on to critical areas while ensuring solutions scale across platforms and product generations.
  3. Autonomously identify, define, and drive solutions to ambiguous, cross-cutting firmware and system-level problems with long-term departmental impact.
  4. Influence firmware, hardware, and manufacturing roadmaps by identifying technical risks, opportunities, and strategic investments across multiple quarters.
  5. Lead the resolution of complex, cross-team issues spanning firmware, hardware, manufacturing, and system integration, including root cause analysis and long-term prevention.

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field
  • 8+ years of embedded firmware development experience
  • Expert-level proficiency in C and embedded systems development on 32-bit RISC architectures (e.g., ARM Cortex)
  • Strong experience with low-power embedded system design and optimization
  • Experience working with operating systems (OS) and real-time operating systems (RTOS)
  • Deep understanding of system communication protocols such as I2C, SPI, USART/UART, and BLE
  • Strong experience with electronics debugging tools including oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, multimeters, power supplies, and power measurement equipment
  • Proven experience leading technically ambiguous, cross-team initiatives and influencing technical direction without formal authority
  • Strong understanding of electrical engineering fundamentals, including reading schematics and hardware specifications
  • Experience with version control using git and modern CI/CD workflows
  • Experience with unit, integration, and system-level testing for embedded systems
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Nice to have

  • Experience working on high-volume consumer electronics products
  • Mentor and sponsor senior engineers and emerging technical leaders

What the JD emphasized

  • 8+ years of embedded firmware development experience
  • Expert-level proficiency in C and embedded systems development on 32-bit RISC architectures (e.g., ARM Cortex)
  • Proven experience leading technically ambiguous, cross-team initiatives and influencing technical direction without formal authority.