---
title: 'Firmware Engineering Manager at Mill'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/firmware-engineering-manager-mill-san-bruno-g605jry02882'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Firmware Engineering Manager at Mill

- **Company:** Mill
- **Location:** San Bruno, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-07-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/mill/jobs/4712302005

## Job description

Mill is a waste prevention technology company reimagining what it means to eliminate waste, starting with food. We build smart systems and infrastructure for homes, businesses, and municipalities that transform food scraps from landfill-bound waste into valuable resources, including chicken feed. Tens of thousands of Mill’s residential food recyclers are already helping households divert millions of pounds of food scraps every year, paving the way for our upcoming launch of Mill Commercial—the industry’s first end-to-end solution for managing, understanding, and preventing food waste in commercial environments (e.g. grocery, restaurants, food services). At Mill, we are passionate about building easy-to-use, beautifully designed technologies that keep food in the food system and out of landfills.

We're seeking a Firmware Engineering Manager to lead the design, development, and implementation of low-level firmware for our next-generation connected product, while remaining hands-on as an individual contributor. You'll manage and grow a small team of firmware engineers while personally contributing to critical design and implementation work, working closely with cloud services, mobile app, product, and hardware teams to integrate connectivity features seamlessly.

## Key Responsibilities

People & Team Leadership

- Manage, mentor, and grow a team of firmware engineers, providing technical guidance, career development, and regular performance feedback.
- Set team priorities and roadmaps in partnership with product and hardware leadership, balancing technical debt, new feature work, and production readiness.
- Recruit and interview firmware engineering candidates as the team scales.
- Foster a collaborative, inclusive team culture that encourages knowledge-sharing and technical growth.

Technical & Individual Contribution

- Personally design and implement robust firmware on MCU platforms, ensuring support for wireless connectivity, data upload, OTA updates, sensor integration, and other core functionalities.
- Develop and optimize communication stacks for wireless protocols, ensuring reliable pairing, network configuration, and data exchange.
- Write efficient low-level code that integrates with hardware peripherals (e.g., RF modules, sensors) using standard interfaces such as GPIO, I2C, SPI, and UART.
- Apply best practices for error handling and performance optimization to support robust connectivity features.
- Work closely with cross-functional teams to rigorously debug, test, and troubleshoot firmware, ensuring optimal performance, reliability, and security.
- Engage actively with multidisciplinary teams, sharing insights and aligning on system-level requirements to drive cohesive project success.
- Drive the team's contributions to deployment readiness for large-scale production.
- Review code from team members and peers to maintain best practices in style, accuracy, and efficiency.

Required Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience, with 5+ years in embedded systems development.
- Prior experience leading, managing, or mentoring engineers, or demonstrated readiness to step into a management role (e.g., tech lead experience).
- Deep understanding of computer networking and firmware for data-intensive applications.
- Strong expertise in C programming for embedded systems, with a solid grasp of memory management and real-time operating system principles.
- Proficiency in hardware-software interfacing, including protocols like GPIO, I2C, SPI, and JTAG.
- Proficiency with troubleshooting tools (debuggers, Wireshark) and measurement equipment (multimeters, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers).
- Demonstrated expertise in debugging and rigorous testing to quickly identify and resolve complex issues.
- Familiarity with version control, CI, and build systems.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to foster a collaborative, team-oriented environment.

## Preferred Skills

- Hands-on experience with connectivity modules (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) and RTOS (FreeRTOS preferred).
- Experience with Jetson linux platform and ESP32 microcontrollers.
- Working knowledge of cloud computing protocols (e.g., MQTT) and platforms like AWS (AWS CDK is a plus).
- Experience with cellular connectivity.

The estimated base salary range for this position is $245-$280K, which does not include the value of benefits or a potential equity grant. A wide range of factors are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to skill sets, market conditions, experience and training, licensure and certifications, and business and organizational needs.

## About Mill

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Mill makes it easy to keep food out of landfills with innovative, odorless food recycling solutions for homes, workplaces, and cities.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Bruno, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Not publicly available (founded by a team from Nest Labs / Google, though specific names are not widely publicized)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Environmental Services / Consumer Hardware & Software
- Target customers: B2C (homeowners), B2B (grocery and food service partners via Mill Commercial)
- Mission: To eliminate waste for good, starting with the food that ends up in landfills. The goal is to turn kitchen scraps into food for chickens, keeping food in the food system and out of landfills.

## Products & Services
- **Mill Food Recycler (Home)**: An odorless, effortless food recycling bin for the home. It uses intelligent tech to dehydrate and reduce food volume by 80% overnight. Users do not need to press a button; the device senses how much is added. The resulting grounds are shipped to Mill's small-farm partners for use as chicken feed. Type: Consumer Hardware + Service (subscription).
- **Mill Commercial**: A new solution for grocery stores and food service businesses to manage food waste at scale, leveraging the same core technology. Type: B2B Hardware + Service.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $170.8M across 6 rounds [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill)
- **Key Metric**: 21,000,000+ pounds of food kept out of landfills [mill.com](https://www.mill.com/)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Prelude Ventures (led Series C), Climate Pledge Fund (Amazon), and others [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill)
- **Growth Signals**: 110 total employees [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/mill) (LinkedIn reports 548, likely including contractors/partners) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill); 14 active job postings as of mid-2026; launch of Mill Commercial; headcount growth of +0.4% monthly [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Hardware + Software Moat**: The combination of a custom hardware appliance, embedded firmware, and a computer vision AI engine creates a difficult-to-replicate system.
- **Network Effect**: The more users Mill has, the more food waste is diverted, strengthening their supply chain of grounds for chicken feed and their partnerships with farms.
- **Brand & Design**: A strong focus on industrial design and user experience (odorless, effortless, beautiful) differentiates it from compost pails and garbage disposals.
- **Climate Impact**: Directly addresses methane emissions from landfills (methane is 80x more potent than CO2), giving it a strong mission-driven narrative.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling the Home Business**: Expanding the subscriber base for the home food recycler.
- **Launching Mill Commercial**: Entering the B2B market with grocery and food service partners to capture waste upstream.
- **International Expansion**: Likely future focus, given the global scale of food waste.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven**: Employees are directly working on climate change, keeping food out of landfills.
- **Hybrid Work**: Hybrid work environment (typical time on-site: 2 days a week) [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/mill).
- **Culture**: Described as a mix of hardware, software, and AI engineering with a startup feel. Offers company equity, 401(K), generous parental leave, free snacks, and company-sponsored family events [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/mill).
- **Engineering Focus**: Heavy investment in hardware engineering (San Bruno) and software/AI (Computer Vision). Roles include Hardware Test Engineer, Senior Firmware Engineer, AI Engineer (Computer Vision), and Product Design Engineer [greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/Mill).
- **Employee Rating**: 3.4/5.0 on LinkedIn (23 reviews), with Culture rated 3.7 and Compensation rated 3.6 [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill).

## Sources
1. [mill.com](https://www.mill.com/)
2. [greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/Mill)
3. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/mill)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill)

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