---
title: 'Manager, Embedded Software Engineering at Loop'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/manager-embedded-software-engineering-loop-antwerp-42n3ra2hhvmz'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-16'
---

# Manager, Embedded Software Engineering at Loop

- **Company:** Loop
- **Location:** Antwerp, Belgium
- **Compensation:** €80k–€125k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/loop-earplugs/c28aea9f-3cd8-4a32-8438-f93f8e965107

## Job description

Manager, Embedded Software Engineering Location: Antwerp or Amsterdam Experience: 5+ years in embedded software development, including 2+ years managing embedded or firmware engineers

Lead the firmware that makes our earwear smarter At Loop, our products are moving beyond passive earplugs into connected and intelligent earwear. Behind every one of them is firmware that has to work flawlessly, from the first board bring-up to the millionth unit off the line and every update after that. As our Manager, Embedded Software Engineering, you’ll lead the team that makes that happen. You’ll own how firmware gets engineered across Loop’s connected and standalone products, from development and launch through sustaining releases in the field. This role is for someone who is equally comfortable growing engineers and challenging a firmware design on its merits. You’ll set the standard, build the team, and make sure what we commit to actually ships, on time and at quality.

## The Role

You’ll lead embedded software across Loop’s product portfolio, owning predictable delivery, engineering quality, and team capability. You’ll combine technical credibility with people leadership. Product defines what we build, Programme Management defines when it lands, and you define how it’s engineered. Detailed architecture and subsystem design authority stay with our senior engineers, and part of your job is growing them into that technical leadership. You will line manage the growing team of embedded software engineers directly. While the team is small, you’ll stay hands-on where it matters. As the team grows, you’ll delegate more, while making sure you never become the critical-path dependency.

## What you’ll do

- Lead, coach, and develop a team of embedded software engineers, setting clear level-referenced expectations and addressing performance early.
- Plan workforce, capacity, tooling, rigs, fixtures, and lab resources to meet commitments, managing priorities and costs within Loop’s approval policy.
- Own firmware delivery across development and sustaining work, including bring-up, manufacturing and test firmware, launch readiness, field issues, security updates, and sustaining releases.
- Ensure clear ownership and acceptance evidence for factory firmware, flashing, provisioning, and version compatibility.
- Estimate and resource work, surface risk early, and own release readiness decisions, including rollout, pause, and rollback.
- Maintain strong engineering standards across coding, review, testing, CI, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), security, and traceability, working within Loop’s Requirements and Risk Management Frameworks.
- Represent embedded software in programme, design, build-readiness, and sustaining forums, owning firmware estimates, dependencies, risks, and readiness judgement.
- Drive cross-system decisions with Engineering, Quality, Industrialisation, suppliers, silicon vendors, and manufacturing partners.
- Lead architecture and design reviews that reach a conclusion on trade-offs, and translate roadmap objectives into clear technical direction.

You won’t

- Commit to milestones without the resourcing and risk picture to back them up.
- Let a slip surface on the milestone date instead of before it.
- Take design authority away from the senior engineers who own it.
- Become the bottleneck your team has to wait on.
- Treat manufacturing and test firmware as an afterthought.
- Let a field defect sit without a severity, a root cause, and a decision.
- Leave performance conversations for later.
- Stay quiet in a cross-functional forum when firmware has a risk to raise.

## How you’ll succeed

You deliver what you commit to. Firmware milestones land within the agreed window, and when something does slip, people hear it from you early. Manufacturing and test firmware is locked ahead of every design-validation build and stays that way. Critical defects don’t reach production, and every issue reported from the field gets triaged within a sprint with a clear decision to fix or accept it. Your team gets stronger with you. Every critical subsystem has a second engineer who knows it, every engineer has a development plan, and new joiners have their first contribution reviewed and merged within four weeks. People want to stay and grow here. You use AI where it really speeds up development and verification, and you hold its output to the same review, test, and traceability standards as everything else. You reason from first principles, work through complex firmware and system issues, and drive cross-functional decisions to a conclusion.

## What you’ll bring

- 5+ years of experience developing embedded software, including at least one connected consumer product taken through to mass production.
- 2+ years managing embedded or firmware engineers (3+ preferred), including responsibility for feedback, development, and performance.
- Experience owning firmware delivery against a hardware programme schedule, including the manufacturing and test firmware production depends on.
- Deep expertise in embedded C/C++, RTOS, Bluetooth and wireless connectivity, microcontroller peripherals, low-power design, and firmware architecture.
- Strong debugging skills and hands-on experience with CI and HIL for hardware-dependent delivery.
- Practical experience using AI tools in software development or verification, and a clear view on where they help and where they need guardrails in embedded work.
- Enough knowledge of DSP and on-device machine learning to resource and review that work credibly.
- The ability to turn objectives into practical delivery and resource plans, balancing people, capacity, cost, and commitments.
- Clear, direct communication of firmware risks and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

## Nice to have

- Experience with hearables, audio, or body-worn wearables.
- Hands-on DSP or on-device machine learning experience.
- Experience with product security or regulatory compliance for connected consumer devices.

Loop isn’t for everyone. We might not be a match if you:

- Prefer managing people without staying close to the technology.
- Prefer writing code without taking responsibility for a team.
- Feel uncomfortable owning a release decision, including the call to pause or roll back.
- Wait for the programme schedule to tell you about firmware risk.
- Treat quality and traceability as paperwork rather than part of the product.
- Avoid hard conversations about performance or priorities.
- Prefer working in your own lane over driving decisions across hardware, quality, and manufacturing.

Still listening? Good. We’re not looking for someone to keep firmware ticking over. We’re looking for someone who can build a team and an engineering standard that take Loop’s connected products from first prototype to millions of ears, and keep them working long after launch. Loopers step in, speak up, and go for more. More firsts. More growth. More: “I can’t believe we did that.” If that sounds like you, press that beautiful apply button and let’s talk.

Hiring process

- Application Window: 13 October – 6 November
- Recruiter Screens: 19 October – 9 November
- Hiring Manager Interviews: 2 November – 13 November
- Technical & Leadership Case Interviews: 16 November – 20 November
- Executive Interview: 23 November – 27 November
- Target Start Date: 4 January 2027

## About Loop

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Loop designs premium earplugs for situational hearing protection, focus, sleep, and sensory needs, building a new category in hearing wellness.
- **Entity Type**: Private (bootstrapped or VC-backed – funding details not publicly disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: Antwerp, Belgium
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Maarten Bodewes and Dimitri O

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Consumer electronics / Hearing wellness / Lifestyle products
- **Target customers**: B2C – nightlife goers, remote workers, people with sensory sensitivities, travelers, sleepers
- **Mission or purpose**: Helping people live life to the fullest by bettering their relationship with sound and senses.

## Products & Services
- **Loop Experience / Experience Plus**: High-fidelity earplugs for concerts, festivals, and loud events; reduce noise while preserving sound clarity (SaaS-like physical product with recurring accessories).
- **Loop Engage / Engage Plus**: Earplugs for conversations and social situations; lower background noise while maintaining speech clarity.
- **Loop Quiet / Quiet 2**: Earplugs for sleep, focus, and noise-sensitive needs; maximum noise reduction in a comfortable fit.
- **Loop Switch**: A single device with three interchangeable modes (Experience, Engage, Quiet) for on-the-fly adjustment.
- **Loop Dream**: Specifically designed for side-sleepers, ultra-soft and comfortable for overnight use.
- **Accessories**: Cases, ear tips in multiple sizes, lanyards. Most models come with multiple ear tip sizes to ensure fit.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: 1.5+ million customers served globally; 250+ employees across three continents [loopearplugs.com](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/about-loop)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly disclosed; company appears to be self-funded or raised non-public funding. Awards include Red Dot Design Award (2023, 2024), Deloitte Belgium Tech Fast 50, and recognition as Belgium’s fastest-growing tech company (2022, 2024) [loopearplugs.com](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/working-at-loop)
- **Growth Signals**: Expanded from nightlife earplugs into focus, sleep, and sensory comfort categories; opened hubs in Amsterdam, New York, and Shanghai; sustained rapid headcount growth from a small team to 250+.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Category creation**: First lifestyle earplug brand to treat hearing protection as a fashion/design item rather than a purely utilitarian medical product.
- **Design-led differentiation**: Award-winning product aesthetics (Red Dot), wide color palette and multiple form factors that appeal to different personas.
- **Strong brand community**: 1.5M+ customers create word-of-mouth flywheel; the brand is a status accessory in music and festival culture.
- **Full product ecosystem**: Multiple models for specific use cases, plus accessories, encouraging repeat purchases and cross-selling.
- **Early mover in sensory wellness**: Tapping into growing awareness around noise pollution, focus, and neurodiversity.

## Strategic Focus
- **Expanding into senses**: Moving beyond hearing to related sensory experiences (e.g., olfactory? – hinted as “expanding into senses” but not detailed) [loopearplugs.com](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/about-loop)
- **Global scaling**: Growing physical presence in key markets (US, China, EU) and building international teams.
- **Product innovation**: Continuous introduction of new models (Switch, Dream) that solve specific customer pain points and create new use cases.
- **Hiring top talent**: Aggressively hiring to maintain growth trajectory; focusing on “growth athletes” who can move fast and own projects.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: High autonomy, direct candor (“no politics, no ego, no BS”), steep learning curve, work with elite talent. Described as intense but rewarding – “you’ll learn more here in a year than most places teach in five” [loopearplugs.com](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/why-work-at-loop)
- **Hybrid/Remote**: Hybrid by design – typically two days in-office per week; plus four weeks per year of “work from anywhere” [loopearplugs.com](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/why-work-at-loop)
- **Benefits**: Top-of-market pay, 32 days of paid time off, comprehensive health insurance, ESOP (employee stock ownership plan), home office budget, mobility budget (company car/transport/bike lease or rent subsidy if close to office in Belgium) [loopearplugs.com](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/why-work-at-loop)
- **Engineering Culture**: Product developers and engineers have full ownership of projects; direct impact on millions of users; “your work doesn’t sit in drafts – it goes live” [loopearplugs.com](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/working-at-loop)
- **For Job Seekers**: Offers a fast-paced, high-growth environment where personal growth is prioritized. Not for everyone – requires high ownership and comfort with direct feedback.

## Sources
1. [Loop Earplugs – About page](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/about-loop)
2. [Loop Earplugs – Why work at Loop](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/why-work-at-loop)
3. [Loop Earplugs – Working at Loop](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/working-at-loop)
4. [Loop Earplugs – Careers page](https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/careers)
5. [Loop Earplugs – Careers (Belgium)](https://www.loopearplugs.com/en-be/pages/careers)

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