ALSO
Embedded Validation & Tools Engineer - OTA
Palo Alto
Sponsorship not specified$10k-$50kDetected 19 days ago
PythonC++GitAWSGCPAzureDockerJenkinsCircleCILinuxPrometheusGrafanaEmbedded SystemsElectrical EngineeringTCP/IPWiresharkCommunicationProblem Solving
About the role
- You'll work closely with Firmware, Release, QA, and Cloud teams to close the loop from release to fleet health.
Responsibilities
- Design, implement and execute comprehensive OTA validation plans across device families and release types (full OS images, firmware, bootloader, A/B updates, delta/patch updates).
- Build, manage and scale automated testbeds and harnesses (hardware-in-the-loop, virtualized devices, emulators) to run regression, integration, and stress tests for OTA flows.
- Implement automation for end-to-end OTA pipelines (from build artifact signing and staging to rollout and post-update verification) using Python, shell, and CI tools.
- Validate update mechanisms and components: bootloader, update agent, package formats, rollbacks, A/B partitions, and recovery modes.
- Validate security: signing/verification, secure transport (TLS), secure boot, key management, and vulnerability surface introduced by update components.
- Perform root cause analysis on failed updates, reproduce field issues, and drive remediation with firmware and backend engineering teams.
- Maintain device lab hardware (JTAG, serial consoles, network emulators, power controllers, logic analyzers) and tooling stacks (Wireshark, serial monitors, provisioning fixtures).
- Together we're working hands-on to imagine, design and build an entirely new solution to a global set of transportation challenges.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- 5+ years of hands-on experience validating embedded devices and firmware updates (OTA or similar).
- Practical experience with building automated test harnesses and integrating tests into CI pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI, etc.).
- Experience with hardware debugging tools and workflows: serial/UART, JTAG/SWD, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, power cycling rigs.
- Experience with cloud OTA platforms and services: AWS IoT Device Management, Mender, Azure IoT, Google Cloud IoT, or custom fleet management systems.
- Knowledge of secure update practices: code signing, public key infrastructure (PKI), TPM/secure element integration, secure boot implementations.
- Experience with CAN/LIN, automotive-grade validation, or industrial protocols for fleeted devices.
- Familiarity with containerization/virtualization for test environments (Docker, QEMU).
- Experience with large-scale rollout strategies (canary/capacity ramping, staged rollouts, feature flags).
- Prior experience with telemetry frameworks and analytics (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
Skills
- Familiarity with networking protocols used for OTA (HTTP(S), MQTT, CoAP) and wireless technologies (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, cellular, BLE).
- Experience analyzing logs, packet captures, and device telemetry to diagnose update failures.
- Excellent communication skills - able to write clear test plans, runbooks, and postmortems.
Compensation
- Experience with CAN/LIN, automotive-grade validation, or industrial protocols for fleeted devices.
- Familiarity with containerization/virtualization for test environments (Docker, QEMU).
- Experience with large-scale rollout strategies (canary/capacity ramping, staged rollouts, feature flags).
- Firmware build systems and OS build frameworks (Yocto/OpenEmbedded, Buildroot).
- Prior experience with telemetry frameworks and analytics (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
Benefits
- Robust health coverage - excellent health, dental, and vision insurance covered up to 100% by ALSO, with FSA & HSA options
- One Medical membership and dedicated insurance advocates
- Rich fertility and family-building benefits with Progyny
- Flexible time off
- Define metrics and KPIs (success rate, rollback rate, mean time to recover, time-to-update), instrument devices and cloud backends to measure rollout health, and produce reports for release readiness.
Company info
- We're ALSO, an electric mobility company originally conceived as a part of Rivian.
- We're a passionate team of builders, dreamers, doers and innovators, focused on creating entirely new (not to mention, innovative and delightful) vertically integrated, small EVs designed to meet the global mobility challenges of today and tomorrow.
- Our mission is to inspire everyone to ride ALSO-replacing many local car, truck and SUV miles with ones on vehicles that are more affordable, more enjoyable and 10-50x more efficient.
- You will design and run validation test programs that ensure OTA updates are robust, secure, and reliable under real-world conditions - including intermittent networks, power faults, device restarts, and edge cases that matter to customers.
This listing is sourced directly from ALSO's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.