Senior Embedded Software Engineer

Who we are: Glydways is reimagining what public transit can be. We believe that mobility is the gateway to opportunity—connecting people to housing, education, employment, commerce, and care. By making transportation more accessible, affordable, and sustainable, we empower communities to thrive and unlock economic and social prosperity. Our mission is to revolutionize transit with a solution that delivers high capacity, exceptional user experiences, unmatched affordability, and minimal environmental impact. The Glydways system is a groundbreaking network of carbon-neutral, interconnected transit pathways powered by standardized autonomous vehicles on dedicated roadways. Operating 24/7 with on-demand access, it offers personalized and efficient mobility—without the burden of heavy upfront infrastructure costs or ongoing taxpayer subsidies. With Glydways, we’re building more than a transportation system; we’re creating a future where everyone, everywhere, has the freedom to move. Meet the team: The Embedded Software team is where the vehicle comes to life. We write and load the firmware that turns raw hardware—sensor kits, custom boards, and main compute—into a reliable, safety-critical machine. Because our software touches nearly every subsystem, we collaborate with engineers from across the company and get hands-on with the newest hardware in the building. About the Role: As a Senior Embedded Software Engineer , you will own critical firmware domains, lead complex cross-functional projects, and help shape our embedded platform and engineering best practices. This is firmware that carries real passengers—on a Glydways vehicle, reliability is a safety requirement, not just a performance goal, and the code you ship is part of the safety case. Roles & Responsibilities: • Design, prototype, build, and test production vehicle firmware for safety-critical systems. • Develop and optimize applications in RTOS environments, tuning for reliability, latency, throughput, memory footprint, and power on resource-constrained platforms. • Own and evolve the communication architecture between MCUs, sensors, and main compute, across both standard and custom protocols (SPI, UART, I2C, CAN, TCP/UDP, and more). • Lead bring-up and debugging for new boards and SoCs—bootloaders, drivers, and low-level diagnostics—partnering with electrical engineers and software developers to take new sensor and compute platforms from prototype to production. • Define and build automated testing frameworks and harnesses at the unit, integration, and system levels alongside test and platform engineers. • Mentor other embedded engineers, give thorough code reviews, and help set engineering standards, tools, and best practices across the team. Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: Core technical skills • Expert-level C and/or C++ for embedded systems; additional languages and tooling are a plus. • Strong command of communication protocols, from low level (SPI, UART, I2C, CAN) to higher level (TCP/UDP). • Experience developing on RTOS environments (e.g., PX5 or other POSIX/pthreads-based real-time OSes such as embedded Linux with pthreads, QNX, VxWorks, or RTEMS). • Experience with MCU bootloaders, device drivers, and new board or SoC bring-up. • Experience deploying firmware to multi-device systems or vehicles in a power-safe, fault-tolerant way. • Demonstrated speed and size optimization for resource-constrained platforms. Process and quality • Experience with safety-critical systems and processes (e.g., ISO 26262 or similar standards) is highly valued. • Solid understanding of the embedded software development life cycle—version control, code review, CI, and automated testing. Nice to have • Experience in automotive and/or transit domains. • Experi