We're developing a family of premium coffee appliances for home use that completely rethink coffee and espresso preparation from start to finish, bringing unparalleled taste, ease of use and sustainability all together into a cohesive line of products. We started over five years ago in stealth mode and have a full pipeline of products in development based on several significant proprietary innovations. All of our appliances are being designed to combine the simplicity and convenience of one-touch automation with the sophistication and capability of precise, customizable controls. Our products enable consumers to explore and enjoy the coffee preparation process in ways that coffee lovers haven't been able to access at home heretofore. Most importantly, our coffees taste amazing. Say goodbye to bland, bitter coffee. Say hello to smoothness and subtle, delicious coffee nuances you never knew were possible.
The form and function of our appliances are well defined now. The electronics and firmware designs are quite far along too, but they have some catching up to do as our mechanical designs are stabilizing in order to be sure everything is finalized in tandem. That's where you come in! We're looking for a truly outstanding Senior Embedded Engineer to work closely with our appliance design team in San Rafael, California. A portion of this role will be on-site for hands-on work, as needed.
We aren't about a big team with narrow/siloed roles. We prefer smaller goal-focused teams with highly-talented and motivated, hands-on, egoless, people with broader roles, even if the work takes a bit longer. This enables us all to see and focus on the big picture together throughout the design process. It also improves our ability to make the best design choices and to move forward efficiently in unison without a lot of second-guessing.
If you join us, you will be an integral member of our small, agile, resourceful engineering team working on tangible, fun products that you can really relate to. Our appliances are complex electro-mechanical products with many interesting challenges. Developing and refining the controls required to manage the real-time operations of all their sensors, actuators, touchscreens and IOT communications will be a rewarding set of projects for the right highly accomplished engineer. You will have the opportunity to own and lead the development of the final versions of the electronics and firmware architectures of our groundbreaking coffee appliances and to then lead bringing them into high volume production.
Key Responsibilities:
Architect, develop and integrate all electronics and firmware for our appliances, and associated manufacturing and test fixtures as needed
Lead the electrical component selection and circuit design for our next generation electronic controls
Manage the PCBA layout and prototyping process
Integrate on-board touchscreen UI (UI design and development is outsourced)
Integrate IOT communications (Cloud-based IOT functionality is intended to be provided by a 3rd party solution provider)
Maintain and improve PC-based GUI to support development efforts
Troubleshoot and root-cause hardware and firmware issues, and implement fixes
Participate in team design reviews to improve product design and quality
Required Skills/Experience:
Minimum 15+ years progressive electrical and firmware design experience
Self-starter and able to handle significant projects with minimal supervision
Substantial experience writing solid, structured, well documented C code
Significant experience with real time operating system - RTOS
Hands-on experience with basic test equipment (multimeter, oscilloscope, etc.)
Hands-on experience with schematics and troubleshooting firmware/hardware
Solid test methodologies to validate/characterize issues or performance
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Thrive working with a team in a collaborative, self-directed startup environment
Controlling and optimizing the performance of BLDC motors
Designing and optimizing closed-loop controls
Real-time instrument GUI interfaces and touchscreens
Various communication interfaces (e.g. UART, SPI, I2C)
Simulation and/or analytical experience
Education:
EE/Software/Computer Engineering BS or equivalent
More About Us:
Our overarching goal as a company is to improve coffee all the way from the farm to your cup - especially including the lives and sustainability of the farmers and farms that grow our coffees. Many coffee companies pay lip service to this. For us, it's way more than some green-washed pretty pictures of coffee farms and farmers. It's at the core of our company's reason for being. We'll be happy to tell you more about this when the time is right.
Design-wise, we're doing something very complicated for home appliances, and our products are going to be on kitchen counters all over the world. This is a rare opportunity to help shape a delightful new physical and digital coffee "experience" that our consumers will have daily, often right before their first sip of coffee in the morning. So, it better be reliable, intuitive, easy - and delicious!
More About You:
If this sounds like an interesting challenge/opportunity that you'd love to embrace, you may be exactly who we're looking for. Please send us a thoughtful note and resume to tell us why you're the one for us. We look forward to hearing from you!