Staff Firmware Engineer - Motor Controls at 1X (San Carlos, CA)Staff Firmware Engineer - Motor Controls

We’re building humanoid robots that work in home - doing the chores, handling the tasks, and giving people their time back. Simple, but it’s not.

To do this right, we have to solve robotics, AI, manufacturing - at the same time, at scale, in a form factor that has to be safe enough to live with your family. If you’re inspired by this, you’ll thrive here. We’ve been at this since 2014 and we’re at the point where the hard problems are behind us and the hard work is in front of us.

NEO is our flagship - a home robot designed to move, learn, and operate in the real world alongside real people. We’re not demoing it - we’re shipping it. We’re excited to meet you, if this excites you.

If you’ve spent your career working on problems that matter and want to see them actually reach the world - this is that moment. We’re scaling, we’re hiring with intention, and we need people who want to build something that will genuinely change how humans spend their time - safely creating abundance for all.

The Firmware team owns the embedded software layer that powers every hardware subsystem of our humanoid robot from distributed communication bus architecture and power management to actuator and motor drive control. We sit at the intersection of hardware and software, and our work is directly on the critical path to every product milestone: without reliable firmware, the robot cannot move, charge, or operate safely. If you want to build the foundational software for a new category of physical AI, this is where that work happens.

Own the motor control firmware that turns current into motion in every joint of NEO, and make it robust, safe and maintainable. Your control loops decide how smooth, quiet and compliant NEO feels around people, and how fast the team can move as the actuator platform grows.

• Develop motor control firmware for BLDC/PMSM actuators, including field-oriented control (FOC), space-vector PWM, and current, velocity and position loops
• Integrate and calibrate position sensing: absolute and incremental encoders, Hall sensors, commutation offsets and multi-turn tracking
• Tune control loops for high bandwidth, low torque ripple and low acoustic noise, including feedforward, friction and cogging compensation
• Implement torque and impedance control modes that support safe, compliant interaction with people
• Build fault detection and protection for overcurrent, overvoltage, undervoltage, overtemperature, stall and sensor failures, with safe torque-off behavior
• Design motor drive communication with deterministic timing to the central controller
• Bring up new motor driver boards and support hardware design reviews for gate drivers, current sensing and power stages
• Test and validate firmware releases on the bench and on full robots, and build tools for automated tuning, logging and regression testing

• Strong embedded instincts: you write control code that stays correct under real hardware conditions, including ISR timing, ADC sampling alignment, PWM edge cases and DMA conflicts
• First-principles debugging: you find root causes at the hardware-firmware boundary with a scope, current probe and an understanding of motor physics
• Safety-first mindset: you treat fault handling, current limits and safe torque-off as core firmware, not an afterthought
• Clear cross-functional communication: you explain control and firmware constraints to electrical and actuator engineers, and pull in early during hardware design

Minimum Requirements:

• 5+ years of embedded firmware development in C/C++ (7+ for senior roles)
• Shipped motor control firmware for BLDC or PMSM motors, including FOC and cascaded control loops
• Solid grasp of motor physics and power electronics: inverters, gate drivers, current sensing, dead time and PWM
• Experience with encoders and sensor interfaces such as SPI, BiSS-C, SSI or ABZ
• Hands-on experience with EtherCAT/CAN or another real-time fieldbus
• Comfort with interrupt-driven, hard real-time code on MCUs such as STM32, TI C2000 or similar
• Hardware debugging with oscilloscopes, current probes, logic analyzers and dynamometers

• Experience with robotic joints, quasi-direct-drive or high-ratio geared actuators
• Background in sensorless control, field weakening or motor parameter identification
• Experience with EtherCAT or CAN FD at high update rates (1 kHz and above)
• Experience with safety-critical systems or standards such as IEC 61508, ISO 13849 or ISO 26262, including functional safety concepts like STO
• Familiarity with a real-time OS such as FreeRTOS, SafeRTOS or Zephyr
• Modeling and simulation in MATLAB/Simulink or Python for controller design
• Robotics or autonomous systems background

What does a successful 1X Team Member look like Team members at 1X who thrive here are builders. They move fast, own their work completely, and treat time like it’s the one thing you can’t get back - because it is. They say what they mean, finish what they start, and hold themselves to a standard before anyone has to ask. We push each other to be better, and we do it with honesty and respect.

• Salary Range: $200,000 – $300,000 + Equity
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid time off and holidays

1X is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, medical condition, genetic information, disability, military or veteran status, justice system impact, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.