Firmware Engineer

About the Company

Human Archive is a research lab backed by Y Combinator focused on modeling human embodied intelligence. Founded by Stanford and UC Berkeley researchers, we build custom hardware products to recover human embodied intelligence as a learned model.

Responsibilities

• Own the embedded software stack on wearable capture hardware
• Design firmware architecture on embedded Linux on ARM
• Develop drivers for cameras, IMUs, microphones, and environmental sensors
• Implement sub-millisecond cross-sensor synchronization and hardware-level timestamping
• Manage multi-stream concurrent capture and hardware video encoder pipelines
• Handle device-to-backend telemetry and secure OTA firmware updates
• Perform firmware-side board bring-up and validate hardware interfaces like I²C, SPI, USB, and MIPI

Requirements

• Strong C/C++ for embedded systems on ARM
• Python for testing, tooling, and automation
• Camera driver experience (V4L2 or equivalent)
• Deep familiarity with embedded interfaces: MIPI CSI-2, I²C, SPI, USB, interrupts
• Ability to read schematics and datasheets
• Understanding of interrupts, race conditions, memory constraints, and real-time scheduling
• Knowledge of RTOS concepts and multi-threaded embedded environments

Preferred Qualifications

• Qualcomm, NXP, or Ambarella BSP experience
• SerDes driver integration
• Hardware H.264 / H.265 encoder pipelines
• Precise timing and synchronization (PTP, IEEE 1588)
• Sensor fusion and Kalman filter implementation
• OTA infrastructure for deployed fleets
• IoT telemetry stacks (MQTT, AWS IoT, Azure IoT Hub)
• Experience with ROS, MCAP, or Foxglove