---
title: 'Firmware Engineer at Salient Motion'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/firmware-engineer-salient-motion-torrance-vd41ev5pqrj0'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Firmware Engineer at Salient Motion

- **Company:** Salient Motion
- **Location:** Torrance, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-07-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/salientmotion/jobs/5302153008

## Job description

**Applicants must be U.S. Citizens or U.S. Permanent Residents (Green Card holders) to meet customer and regulatory requirements**

Who We Are

We are pioneering modular motion technologies to power the next generation of innovation for Industrial, Aerospace and Defense. If you're excited about disrupting legacy industries, and passionate about motor control technology, let's chat!

We are at the forefront of innovation, crafting exclusive motion control components that propel the industrial, aerospace, and defense sectors into the future.

A couple other things:

- We are open to relocating you
- We have great benefits
- We are well funded, and already generating revenue
- We are located in beautiful Torrance, CA and just moved into a new large hangar facility

About the role:

We need an embedded software engineer who can work across firmware and hardware. This is not a pure software role - the candidate will use oscilloscopes, read schematics, and debug board-level issues alongside writing C code.

What you'll do:

- Writing firmware in C for STM32 microcontrollers, particularly but not limited to motor controllers
- End to end development: derive requirements, design/architect to satisfy requirements, implementation and verification.
- Bringing up new hardware and debugging issues alongside motor-control and electrical engineers
- Support mechanical team with new actuator design and verification
- Example real task: Diagnosing why an Ethernet PHY reports CRC errors by analyzing R MII clock timing with an oscilloscope, reading the PHY datasheet, and identifying a board design issue.

What you need:

- U.S. Citizenship - Required for defense projects
- Comfortable working on defense-related projects
- 2-3 years embedded C programming experience
- RTOS experience - ThreadX, FreeRTOS, Zephyr, or similar
- Communication interface experience - Must have worked with at least 2-3 of: SPI, I2C, CAN, UART, Ethernet, BiSS-C
- Embedded peripheral experience - Must be comfortable with Analog-to- Digital Converters, Timers, Memories (Flash, EEPROM, fRAM etc.)
- Hardware debugging - Oscilloscope and/or logic analyzer experience
- Software debugging - JTAG/SWD debugger experience (J-Link, Lauterbach, Ozone, etc.)
- Schematic reading - Able to look at a circuit diagram and understand signal flow
- On-site - Majority on-site presence required (at least 4 out of 5 days)

Nice to haves:

- DO-178C / DAL certification experience (aerospace software safety standard)
- Motor control background: FOC, Space Vector Modulation, current loops
- Sensor experience: Hall sensors, incremental encoders, absolute encoders

What we have to offer:

We are not just building components. We are reshaping the future of the Aerospace and Defense component industry, which is a $300B+ market! Come join us and help build next generation systems that will make a massive impact at global scale.

- We offer competitive compensation: $120,000 to $140,000 base salary + equity
- Exceptional healthcare benefits, Medical is 100% covered by the company
- Flexible PTO
- 401K
- More to come!

## About Salient Motion

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Salient Motion designs and manufactures critical electromechanical actuation systems for commercial aviation and defense, replacing legacy supply chains with modular, software-defined motion control.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: Torrance, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Vishaal Mali (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Aviation and Aerospace Component Manufacturing, Defense
- **Target Customers**: OEMs (e.g., Boeing), MROs, and defense contractors for commercial airliners and military platforms (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission**: To change the paradigm of legacy aerospace and defense supply chains, unlocking a new era of speed, innovation, and possibility.

## Products & Services
- **Critical Actuation Systems**: Advanced electromechanical actuators (linear and rotary) for flight control, landing gear, and other mission-critical functions on commercial and military aircraft.
- **Software-First Architecture**: A modular, software-defined actuation platform that decouples control logic from hardware. Core motor control software is certified to DO-178C standards as a reusable library, enabling rapid configuration and validation across platforms.
- **Certification Services**: Certification-centric engineering built from day one, aiming for up to 10x reductions in cost and lead time for certifiable products.
- **Support & Sustainment**: Direct, fast, and personal support for integration, troubleshooting, and sustainment of actuation systems.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding of **$4.0M** (Seed round led by Cantos VC in October 2024, with participation from AE Ventures and Ian Rountree; a Pre-Seed round occurred in November 2022)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Cantos (Lead), AE Ventures, Ian Rountree. Key customer/partner: **Boeing** (collaborating on certifying modular actuators for commercial airliners).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of ~30 employees with +15.2% monthly growth; talent sourced from Anduril Industries, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, and other top aerospace/defense firms; active job postings increasing +200% month-over-month; expansion to a second office in Irvine, CA.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Software-First Modularity**: Their core differentiator is a software-defined architecture that is certified as a reusable library (DO-178C). This allows for rapid, low-cost configuration for different aircraft platforms, offering a 10x improvement in lead time and cost over legacy suppliers.
- **Vertically Integrated Supply Chain**: Streamlined engineering workflows and vertically integrated partnerships enable delivery of actuator systems in weeks, not quarters.
- **Certification-First Approach**: All systems are designed with certification in mind from day one, drastically reducing the time and cost to achieve airworthiness.
- **Legacy Disruption**: They offer a direct alternative to high-cost, slow-moving legacy OEM suppliers, providing certified solutions without overhead markup.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale Production**: Moving from design and prototyping to manufacturing and delivery at scale, as evidenced by hiring for Senior Manufacturing Engineer and Quality Manager roles.
- **Expand Customer Base**: Deepening the partnership with Boeing while expanding to other commercial and defense OEMs.
- **Domestic Supply Chain**: Developing motors and inverters using domestic resources to meet national security imperatives.
- **Platform Development**: Refining their core "electric motion operating system," including standalone inverters, web-based configuration platforms, and performant motors.

## Why Work Here
- **High-Impact Work**: Employees solve some of the hardest motion control challenges in aerospace and defense, with work that directly impacts millions of daily passengers.
- **Culture**: Described as a high-velocity environment emphasizing "Extreme Entrepreneurship," "Execution Over Excuses," and "Mastery Over Ego." The culture values ownership, creativity, and a relentless focus on execution.
- **Strong Talent Pool**: Team includes veterans from Anduril, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX, providing a steep learning curve and high-performance peer group.
- **Work Policy**: **In-Office** (Torrance, CA and Irvine, CA). The company explicitly values in-person collaboration.
- **Growth Trajectory**: Early-stage (Seed) with rapid headcount growth, offering significant upside and career acceleration for early employees.

## Sources
1. [salientmotion.com](https://salientmotion.com/)
2. [salientmotion.com](https://salientmotion.com/careers)
3. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/salient-motion)
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/salient-motion)

## Other roles at Salient Motion

- [People Operations Generalist](https://feeny.ai/job/people-operations-generalist-salient-motion-torrance-21ejkdqd2ggd) — Torrance, CA
- [Controls Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/controls-engineer-salient-motion-torrance-ne6rfv91cwrf) — Torrance, CA
- [Global Supply Chain Manager- Electronics](https://feeny.ai/job/global-supply-chain-manager-electronics-salient-motion-torrance-gcm3vx04a36d) — Torrance, CA
- [Global Supply Chain Manager, Mechanical](https://feeny.ai/job/global-supply-chain-manager-mechanical-salient-motion-torrance-62aw33agrcak) — Torrance, CA
- [Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/systems-engineer-salient-motion-torrance-9b04t83yb6wr) — Torrance, CA
- [Senior Systems Engineer, Safety and Reliability](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-systems-engineer-safety-and-reliability-salient-motion-torrance-sjbcgpw2099h) — Torrance, CA
- [Senior Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-technical-recruiter-salient-motion-torrance-0ptpy1f4cbj7) — Torrance, CA
- [Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineer-salient-motion-saginaw-xes3gtct2jz4) — Saginaw, MI
- [Wire Harness Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/wire-harness-design-engineer-salient-motion-torrance-6vhw48j56926) — Torrance, CA
- [Electrical Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/electrical-test-engineer-salient-motion-torrance-qmh2n380b0ny) — Torrance, CA