This is a unique opportunity for a highly capable and motivated individual. As senior embedded systems engineer at Soundbrenner, you’ll be in charge of electrical engineering and firmware development of a next-generation wearable device. It will be your responsibility to oversee the development of this new product and bring it to life, from prototyping stage into mass manufacturing of tens of thousands of units.
This position is based in Hong Kong or Shenzhen and you may have to travel to Berlin occasionally. There's even the opportunity to spend a few months in our Berlin office to get to know the rest of the tech team if desired.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead and coordinate Soundbrenner’s embedded systems development for Pulse and Core products
- Develop and maintain our firmware in Embedded C: clock stability, network synchronisation, DSP, time-triggered architectures / scheduling, Bluetooth communication, etc.
- Support the work of our Contract Manufacturer by defining requirements, reviewing schematics and testing electrical engineering hardware designs
- Work hand in hand with industrial and mechanical designers, electrical engineers and our mobile and desktop app team
- Validate important feature assumptions using scope, logic analyser, and custom-built tools
- Solve interesting engineering challenges such as low power consumption, latency-sensitive network synchronization algorithms, Bluetooth connectivity and communication
What we’re looking for (hard skills)
- At least 3 years of experience developing embedded systems; high proficiency in
- Embedded C programming
- High proficiency in subversioning systems (git)
- Ability to read and understand schematics, proficiency with EDA tools (e.g. Altium or KiCad)
- You are capable of understanding and designing electronic circuitry for prototyping, including the creation of concise schematics, PCBA routing, and testing electronic systems.
- Experience on one or more of the following platforms is an advantage: Nordic nRF52840 / ARM Cortex M4 (Core) and Cypress PSoC 4 BLE / ARM Cortex M0 (Pulse)
- Bonus: Especially profound knowledge of capacitive touch systems, display technology, haptic actuators, and Bluetooth communication.
- Super bonus: holding an undegraduate or graduate degree from a Hong Kong university
What we’re looking for (soft skills)
- Ideally you are a musician so you understand how music accessories are used and have an interest in music technology
- Fluent Mandarin and English.
- You keep yourself up to date about modern coding style and debugging/testing techniques
- You’re tidy: you code concisely, think ahead, document your work properly and apply coding design patterns.
- You care deeply about doing great work. You need to derive your satisfaction not from praise, but from being proud of what you accomplished yourself. Work needs to play a major part in your life and your priorities. As a member of Soundbrenner you are building a company from the ground up. That means your life right now needs to be all about growing, learning and building and you need to be very excited about the idea of that.
- You need to be able to think outcome oriented. You always need to understand why you are ultimately doing something and constantly ask yourself if what you are currently doing is the best way to achieve it.
- You should be very comfortable being uncomfortable. Challenges and problems don’t scare you. If you are surrounded by problems you don’t focus on what’s wrong but on how you can solve it.
- You’re interested in wearable technology
What it’s like working at Soundbrenner
You run your area like it’s your own company and the possibilities are endless, so you’ll need to hit the road running and will be expected to take initiatives on a daily basis. Plan, execute, follow-up and scale.
You will work with very talented people in an intense work environment. As a result, you will experience one of the steepest possible learning curves and have the chance to grow in rapid speed together with the company. It will be quite fast paced and a hell a lot of fun.
If you are like us you have a passion for great design, technology and hardware. At Soundbrenner you get the chance to make this passion your job. Working for a hardware company you get to witness the miracles of making something out of nothing and holding your own product in your hand. What could be more exciting?
At Soundbrenner we value justice and we value fairness. If you are capable of adding a lot of value to the company, you will be compensated accordingly. That’s why we are more than happy to offer you company equity as part of your pay. All you need to worry about is doing what you love to do: A great job.
The work we do at Soundbrenner has the potential to touch the life of every single musician on the planet. If we are successful, your work may influence an entire industry for the better. We love music and working on something that matters inspires us to give our best every single day.
You understand that your ideas have the potential to change the world? You don’t just dream to get something done - you are willing to take the first steps with all its consequences? Then you might fit right in.
About us
Soundbrenner is a high-growth music technology start-up from Berlin and Hong Kong, founded by two entrepreneurial musicians in 2014. Soundbrenner's mission is to bring great design and advanced technology to every musician on the planet, by combining wearable music tools with great software. This product ecosystem is designed to be used every single time music is made anywhere. To date, Soundbrenner sold and shipped over 60,000 wearables, which are available in music stores in over 40 countries. Soundbrenner's apps were downloaded over 2 million times and are currently used by over 500,000 musicians every month.
We founded the company in Hong Kong, where all the business, finance and marketing takes place, and which is close to the manufacturing hubs of China.
The software engineering is done in our Berlin tech office. Our language is English, because in our company 12 nationalities work together on a daily basis.
We’ve raised close to $2 million USD in funding from investors. We were featured in the New York Times, Techcrunch, Gizmodo and around a dozen of other international press outlets, and have been on German and Hong Kong national television.
How to apply
After initial review of your CV, the hiring process includes a personal interview with the founders and a review of work samples or code challenge. We are trying to keep the process short and sweet.