Role Overview
The ideal Embedded Engineer at Precision AI is someone who sees the future of unmanned systems and wants to help build it. You’ll work in a multidisciplinary environment alongside electrical, mechanical, GNC (Guidance, Navigation, and Control), and software engineers, developing the real-time embedded systems that power our autonomous drones from concept through flight testing.
If you’re someone who enjoys working close to the hardware; designing boards, writing firmware, and debugging real-time behavior, this role will feel like home. You come from a background that blends electrical engineering and computer science, with experience developing bare-metal and RTOS-based systems, writing efficient C and C++ code, and building reliable sensor and control interfaces.
You’ll spend your days designing, implementing, and testing embedded software that makes our UAVs smarter and more capable. Some days you’ll be in the lab, bringing up new boards or optimizing control loops; other days you’ll be in the field, watching your code guide drones through real-world missions.
At Precision AI, we move fast and build things that matter. If you’re a hands-on engineer who takes pride in quality, thrives in collaborative teams, and wants to see your work make a measurable impact on sustainable agriculture, we’d love to meet you.
This role is hybrid in Calgary due to the hands-on nature of hardware bring-up, lab testing, and UAV flight verification and validation.
Key Responsibilities
Embedded Firmware & Drivers
- Design, implement, and optimize embedded software in C/C++ for UAV platforms and sensor systems.
- Develop and maintain drivers for IMUs, GPS, LiDAR, cameras, and environmental sensors.
- Implement communication protocols (CAN, UART, SPI, I2C, Ethernet) and ensure reliability in field conditions.
- Documentation: block diagrams, message sequence diagrams, state machine flow charts, code documentation, code standards.
Real-Time Systems & Control
- Develop RTOS-based (Zephyr) applications in C.
- Integrate ML models in C++.
- Develop multi-thread applications that interact with ML.
- Implement fault detection, safety interlocks, and power management features.
- Good abstraction and design practices.
Hardware-Software Integration & Testing
- Collaborate with electrical/mechanical engineers to bring up new boards and subsystems.
- Conduct hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and system-in-the-loop (SIL) testing.
- Debug across the hardware/software stack, using lab tools (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers) and field tests.
- Unit, black box, functional testing, code review, and regression testing.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Interface with AI Software Engineers to ensure reliable, low-latency delivery of sensor data to computer vision/SLAM pipelines.
- Work with Technical Program Managers to align embedded implementations with system-level requirements, safety standards, and operational constraints.
Relevant Experience
- 8+ years of embedded software or firmware development experience.
- Strong proficiency in C and C++ for embedded and real-time systems.
- Direct experience with UAVs/drones or with the integration of advanced sensors (IMUs, GPS, LiDAR, cameras, etc.).
- Familiarity with Linux device drivers, and real-time control loops.
- Experience testing, debugging, and deploying embedded code in the field.
What You Bring
- Ability to bridge hardware and software in constrained, safety-critical environments.
- Hands-on mindset: eager to move between lab debugging and UAV field testing.
- Strong communication skills for cross-functional collaboration.
- Willingness to travel 5–10% for field deployments and integration tests
- Able to handle occasional weekend work
Bonus
- Experience with PX4, ArduPilot, or other UAV autopilot frameworks.
- Background in aerospace, defense, or agricultural robotics.
- Knowledge of sensor fusion, embedded AI acceleration, or safety-critical software.
- Experience with Zephyr
- Electronics: Wire harness design, electronics prototyping (Altium, Eagle, KiCAD), soldering
- Competition or Open Source Team Experience
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