Firmware QA Engineer
Role summary
Seeking a Firmware QA Engineer for an IoT-enabled cold chain logistics platform serving healthcare and pharmaceutical customers. This hands-on role involves significant manual testing on real hardware, reproducing issues, collecting logs, and performing ship testing to ensure device reliability before deployment. You will collaborate with firmware, hardware, backend, and operations teams to validate end-to-end system behavior and communicate quality status.
Firmware QA Engineer (Embedded Test Engineer) In-Office - Westlake Village, CA $80,000 - $110,000
Job Summary
We are seeking a Firmware QA Engineer to improve reliability across an IoT-enabled cold chain logistics platform serving healthcare and pharmaceutical customers. This role is firmware-focused and hands-on - you will spend significant time running manual tests on real hardware, reproducing issues, collecting logs, and performing ship testing (pre-deployment verification) to ensure devices behave correctly before deployment.
You will work closely with firmware and hardware engineering, and coordinate with backend and operations teams to validate end-to-end behavior.
Responsibilities
- Validate firmware releases on hardware against defined scope and acceptance criteria
- Execute manual regression testing across core device behaviors (power, sensors, charging, connectivity, fault recovery)
- Perform ship testing and pre-deployment verification, including device setup, configuration checks, and release readiness validation for outgoing units
- Run dedicated firmware test passes for each release (smoke, regression, and targeted suites) and report clear pass/fail results
- Validate GPS functionality and firmware behavior, including time to first fix, accuracy checks, signal loss and recovery, and low-signal edge cases
- Reproduce and triage device issues using logs and lab tools (serial logs, in-house tooling)
- Partner with firmware and hardware engineers early to clarify expected behavior, edge cases, and testability needs
- Validate connectivity behavior relevant to firmware, including pairing and stability
- Support investigation and reproduction of customer-impacting issues by capturing device evidence and helping isolate root cause boundaries
- Contribute light scripting and tooling to speed up repetitive checks (Python, shell) - automation is not the core requirement
- Communicate quality status, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to cross-functional stakeholders
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Electrical, Computer, Software, Mechanical, or related field)
- Experience testing embedded firmware or hardware-integrated systems
- Comfortable working on-site and handling devices in a lab environment
- Strong manual testing discipline and ability to follow and improve repeatable test procedures
- Experience debugging using logs and basic tools (serial logs, Linux commands, basic network traces)
- Familiarity with firmware concepts: versioning, device state, power cycling, failure recovery, and regression testing
- Ability to write clear bug reports with steps, evidence, and impact
- Able to work effectively across firmware, hardware, backend, and operations teams
Nice to Have
- Experience validating firmware update flows (OTA or local) and confirming device version post-update
- Experience testing GPS modules and interpreting GPS-related logs (time to first fix, accuracy metrics)
- Scripting experience in Bash/Shell and/or Python for test utilities, log parsing, and repeatable validation workflows
- Experience in regulated or safety-conscious environments (healthcare, life sciences, aerospace, OEM)
