Job description
We're looking for an Embedded Firmware Developer to join our technical team in Kitchener. This is a hands-on role bringing connected hardware products to life: writing firmware, working at the bench during board bring-up, and helping carry projects from first prototype through production.
Waterloo Technical is a product design and engineering consultancy that's been bringing hardware products to life for over 14 years. Our team of ~20 works out of two facilities in downtown Kitchener, serving clients across IoT, industrial electronics, environmental monitoring, HVAC controls, and agricultural technology. The products we build are full mechatronic systems: enclosures, mechanisms, sensors, boards, and firmware, designed together under one roof. You won't work on one product for years. You'll work on several at once, each at a different stage, each with a client waiting on the result.
What You'll Do
- Design, write, and debug firmware for microcontroller-based products: sensors, connectivity (BLE, Wi-Fi, LoRa, cellular), power management, and battery-operated devices
- Work at the bench with our electrical and prototyping teams during board bring-up: scope and logic analyzer in hand, schematic on the screen
- Break projects into workable pieces, track progress, and keep your projects moving
- Join client calls, explain technical decisions in plain language, and build the kind of trust that keeps clients coming back
- Coordinate work across our firmware team and keep the pieces fitting together
- Contribute to architecture decisions: MCU selection, power strategy, connectivity approach, and how the electronics fit into the larger system
- Help decide where problems get solved. When something surfaces in design, manufacturing, or the field, the fix might be firmware, or it might be a hardware change, a mechanical tweak, or a process adjustment. You'll be part of figuring out which
What We're Looking For
- 2-6 years of experience shipping embedded firmware on products that made it to customers
- Strong C (and ideally some C++ or Python) on ARM Cortex-M or similar MCU platforms
- Comfortable reading schematics and debugging at the hardware/firmware boundary: you don't need to design boards, but you need to know what the board is doing
- A systems thinker: you see firmware as one part of a product that also has mechanics, electronics, manufacturing steps, and a user, and you're curious about all of it
- Organized and self-directed: you can own a project's firmware track, not just tickets handed to you
- A clear communicator who can talk to clients, not just compilers
- Degree or diploma in Electrical/Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent hands-on experience
Nice to Have
- Experience with board bring-up, hardware debugging, or basic PCB design
- Experience with RTOS environments (FreeRTOS, Zephyr) and OTA update systems
- Exposure to production test development or manufacturing ramp-up
- Experience in a consultancy or client-facing engineering role
- You've built your own electronics projects just because you wanted them to exist
Why This Role
You'll get breadth that a single-product company can't offer: different industries, different architectures, different constraints, all inside one job. You'll work directly with our firmware lead and senior technical team, with a clear path toward owning larger projects and client relationships as you grow. We're a small team, so your decisions actually reach the product.
This role is based in Kitchener and is primarily on-site: the bench work and client collaboration are the point. Some flexibility for hybrid work once you're established. We offer competitive compensation, health benefits, and profit sharing.
If you want to write firmware that ships inside real products, and you'd rather understand the whole machine than just your corner of the code, we'd love to hear from you!
