Firmware / Embedded Software Engineer (Robotics)

Description

Role Overview

At AIRoA, we leverage third-party hardware for research purposes while simultaneously developing our own humanoids, dual-arm robots, robotic hands, and data collection devices in-house.

This position is not limited to maintaining or troubleshooting existing robots. Its mission is to build a reliable robotics foundation that operates stably in the real world, covering everything from the low-level layers of physical robots to system integration in order to enable robotics AI research, evaluation, and data collection. You will work closely with the Research, Robotics, Mechanical, and Electrical teams.

Specifically, you will be involved in areas that directly affect the real-world performance and reliability of robots, including motors, sensors, communications, power systems, control cycles, safety monitoring, logging, calibration, and diagnostic functions.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and verify firmware and embedded software for humanoids, dual-arm robots, robotic hands, and teleoperation systems
• Control devices such as motors, sensors, actuators, and communication modules
• Develop robotics control platforms using MCUs, SoCs, Linux-based embedded systems, RTOS, and related technologies
• Design and implement inter-device communication using CAN, UART, SPI, I2C, USB, Ethernet, and other protocols
• Develop logging and diagnostic functions for sensor values, joint angles, torque, current, temperature, error states, and other system data
• Design interfaces between low-level control layers and higher-level robotics software platforms such as ROS / ROS 2
• Ensure the stability and reproducibility required for teleoperation, leader–follower systems, and data collection pipelines
• Conduct real-robot testing, failure analysis, root-cause investigation, and design improvements to prevent recurrence
• Integrate systems in collaboration with Mechanical, Electrical, AI, Robotics, and Cloud teams
• Improve the reliability, operability, and scalability of robotic systems used in research projects

Requirements

Required Qualifications

• Practical experience in embedded software or firmware development using C / C++
• Development experience using MCUs, SoCs, Linux-based embedded systems, or RTOS
• Experience developing software that controls real hardware such as sensors, actuators, and motors
• Experience with implementation or real-hardware debugging using communication interfaces
• Experience debugging real hardware using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, debuggers, and similar tools
• Experience analyzing and improving issues in systems involving electrical, mechanical, and software components
• Business-level Japanese proficiency (equivalent to JLPT N2 or above)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing hardware products with moving mechanisms, such as robots, factory automation equipment, mobility products, home appliances, medical devices, industrial equipment, drones, and precision devices
• Experience with brushless DC motors, servo motors, stepper motors, and actuator control
• Experience developing robotic arms, robotic hands, humanoids, dual-arm robots, or mobile robots
• Experience developing robotic systems using ROS / ROS 2, micro-ROS, DDS, and related technologies
• Experience with motion control using EtherCAT, CANopen, CiA 402, and related protocols
• Knowledge of real-time control, control cycle design, latency reduction, and jitter reduction
• Experience designing safety functions, fail-safe mechanisms, anomaly detection, and emergency stop systems
• Experience developing RTOS, Linux drivers, Linux kernel modules, and related software
• Experience with log analysis, test automation, and test tool development using Python or similar languages
• Ability to read technical documentation in English and communicate technically with overseas vendors in English

What You Will Work On

• Development of low-level control platforms for humanoids and dual-arm robots
• Firmware development to integrate robotic hands, arms, and sensor systems
• Development of communication and control interfaces required for teleoperation and leader–follower systems
• Development of logging, diagnostic, and synchronization functions to collect high-quality real-world data from research robots
• Evaluation, integration, and customization of third-party robot hardware
• Design of embedded architectures for the development of AIRoA’s proprietary robotic systems
• Analysis, reproduction, correction, and permanent countermeasures for issues that occur on real hardware
• Preparation of implementation and verification environments to ensure research outcomes can be reproduced on real-world robots

Why Join AIRoA

AIRoA’s project is not merely an initiative to build a standalone robot product. By collecting large-scale data from real-world robots and making it available to society as AI models, datasets, and evaluation infrastructure, AIRoA aims to accelerate robotics development both in Japan and around the world.

Firmware and embedded software are at the core of this vision. Without stable robot operation, high-quality data cannot be collected. If the behavior of sensors and actuators is unstable, AI models cannot be properly evaluated or trained. Ensuring the reliability, reproducibility, and control quality of physical robots directly contributes to the value of the AI robotics platform itself.

In this position, you will play an important role in supporting the next-generation robot AI platform from the physical robot side, working across research, AI, robotics, mechanical, and electrical domains.

Benefits

There are currently no comparable projects in the world that collect data and develop foundation models on such a large scale. As mentioned above, this is one of Japan’s leading national projects, supported by a substantial investment of 20.5 billion yen from NEDO.

This position will play a crucial role in determining the success of the project. You will have broad discretion and responsibility, and we are confident that, if successful, you will gain both a great sense of achievement and the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to society.

Furthermore, we strongly encourage engineers to actively build their careers through this project—for example, by publishing research papers and engaging in academic activities.