Principal Embedded Firmware Engineer (Smart Metering & Metrology)

Role Overview

As the Principal Firmware Engineer, you will be the technical authority for our smart metering firmware platform. You will lead the architecture and implementation of high-precision measurement algorithms for both Smart Energy (Electricity) and Smart Water meters. Your goal is to ensure "Revenue Grade" accuracy, ultra-low power consumption for 15-year battery life, and secure, robust data communication over utility networks.

Key Responsibilities

• Metrology Core Development:

  Architect and optimize digital signal processing (DSP) firmware for energy (kWh, kVARh, Harmonics) and water (Ultrasonic or Electromagnetic flow) measurement.

• Standards Leadership:

  Direct the implementation of DLMS/COSEM (IEC 62056) and ANSI C12 protocols, ensuring the meters are interoperable with global Head-End Systems (HES).

• Power Management Strategy:

  Define the low-power states and "Last Gasp" (power failure notification) logic, ensuring water meters achieve a 15+ year battery lifespan while maintaining continuous sensing.

• Security & Encryption:

  Implement advanced security architectures, including AES-GCM-128/256, secure boot, and Hardware Security Module (HSM) integration to protect grid data. Lifecycle Management: Own the strategy for robust Over-the-Air (OTA) firmware updates, ensuring zero-fail deployments for millions of devices in the field.

• Mentor & Review:

  Provide high-level code reviews and technical mentorship to the firmware team, establishing MISRA C coding standards and unit testing rigor.

Technical Requirements

• Experience: 10+ years in embedded C/C++ development for high-volume, high-reliability industrial products (specifically Smart Meters).
• Silicon Expertise: Mastery of TI (MSP430/MSP432/C2000), NXP (Kinetis/LPC), or Microchip (SAM/PIC32), specifically their specialized metrology peripherals (ADCs, Front-ends).

• Metrology Math:

  Expert understanding of Phase Compensation, Gain Calibration, and Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) for harmonic analysis.

• OS/RTOS:

  Experience with bare-metal optimization and RTOS environments like FreeRTOS or Zephyr in resource-constrained environments.

• Communication Stacks:

  Deep experience integrating wireless stacks (NB-IoT, LoRaWAN, Wi-SUN) with the application layer.

Preferred Qualifications

• In-depth knowledge of the MID (Measurement Instruments Directive) and OIML R49/R46 certification requirements.
• Experience with Ultrasonic Time-of-Flight (ToF) algorithms for water flow measurement.
• Familiarity with anti-tamper logic (magnetic field detection, cover-open sensing).