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air · software

Embedded Firmware Engineer

$130k – $195k

Own the firmware that lives on the flight controller — where hard real-time meets bare metal meets safety-critical code.

Why it matters

PX4/ArduPilot contributors who can push clean code into autopilot stacks (or the custom replacements at primes) are scarce and recruited aggressively.

Skills at a glance
1

C/C++ + RTOS fundamentals

≈ 8 months

Low-level systems thinking. Every bug in a flight controller is a masters class in computer architecture.

Skill
🛠 SkillModern C / C++17 fluency· cppreference
essentialFree

Autopilot codebases are almost exclusively C++17.

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🛠 SkillFreeRTOS or Zephyr· FreeRTOS
essentialFree

Tasks, queues, mutexes, priority inversion — you’ll debug all of these.

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Course
🎓 CourseEmbedded C Programming with Arm Cortex-M· Coursera
essential40hintermediate$49

Goes from registers to interrupts — the exact toolchain autopilots run on.

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Knowledge
📖 KnowledgeMaking Embedded Systems (Elecia White)· Amazon
important

The canonical book on production embedded practice.

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2

Flight controller internals

≈ 6 months

Inside the autopilot — where uORB, MAVLink, and DMA transfers all meet.

Skill
🛠 SkillPX4 firmware contributions· PX4 dev guide
essentialFree

A merged PX4 PR is the strongest signal to a hiring manager you can ship real firmware.

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🛠 SkillMAVLink / uORB message routing· MAVLink
essentialFree

The glue protocols that move data between modules + ground stations.

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Knowledge
📖 KnowledgeDroneCAN / UAVCAN bus· DroneCAN
importantFree

CAN-based protocol that’s overtaking MAVLink for intra-vehicle comms.

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Tool
🔧 ToolJ-Link / OpenOCD debugging· OpenOCD
importantFree

You cannot ship firmware you cannot single-step.

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3

Hardware + safety

≈ 6 months

Where firmware meets schematic meets certification.

Skill
🛠 SkillSchematic reading + HW bring-up· SparkFun
recommendedFree

Firmware engineers who can debug HW ship faster. Period.

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🛠 SkillRust for embedded· Rust Embedded Book
importantFree

Memory-safe firmware is increasingly how safety-critical code gets written.

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Knowledge
📖 KnowledgeDO-178C DAL-B mindset· RTCA
nice-to-haveFree

Matters the moment your firmware goes into a certified aircraft.

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Certification
📜 CertificationIPC-A-610 (electronics assembly)· IPC
nice-to-have$350

Helps when you’re co-designing with HW teams and inspecting boards.

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