Sr. Firmware & Systems Engineer

Description

AEM (Advanced Environmental Monitoring) is the global leader in innovative mission critical weather, wildfire and water monitoring and intelligence solutions. We aim to be the world’s essential source for environmental insights – enabling decisive action and positive outcomes for our customers and their constituents. Our family of innovators offers world-class hydrometeorological technologies and services, including sensors, dataloggers, telemetry, and advanced analytics and software. Our technology and services empower the communities and organizations to survive – and thrive – in the face of escalating environmental risks.

Van Essen Instruments, an AEM brand, was founded in 1938 by Cornelis van Essen in Delft, Netherlands. In the early 1990s, Van Essen began to offer standard water related equipment such as standalone dataloggers, which used external sensors and flow meters for open channels. We also offer telemetric solutions. Since the deployment of the first Diver, Van Essen sold over 200,000 dataloggers worldwide. Its commitment to quality and performance has established Van Essen Instruments as one of the premier brands in the industry. Van Essen has its headquarters in the Netherlands (Delft), and sales locations in Canada and the US. For more information, please visit www.vanessen.com.

We are seeking a Senior Firmware & Systems Engineer to take ownership of firmware design and integration across Van Essen’s product portfolio. This is a hands-on technical leadership role responsible for developing secure embedded systems, supporting production, and ensuring compliance with European cybersecurity regulations (RED and NIS2).The position owns all firmware development at Van Essen and acts as a liaison between Van Essen Instruments (Delft) and Lambrecht Meteo (Göttingen, Germany) for hardware, testing, security, and certification alignment. The ideal candidate combines deep embedded experience with strong cross-disciplinary coordination skills, ensuring that firmware, hardware, and production systems operate seamlessly together.

Job Responsibilities:

Firmware Ownership and Development

• Lead hands-on development for embedded environmental monitoring and telemetry systems.
• Design, implement, and maintain secure firmware including bootloaders, data acquisition, telemetry interfaces, and OTA update mechanisms.
• Conduct board bring-up, debugging, and hardware validation for new products.
• Integrate cryptographic mechanisms (AES, ECC) to support secure communication and firmware update paths.
• Evaluate and contribute to the transition toward certificate-based authentication and Mutual TLS (mTLS) for end-to-end device security.
• Ensure all firmware aligns with RED and NIS2 cybersecurity requirements and internal security standards.

Testing, Production, and Manufacturing Support

• Work directly with manufacturing partners to install, test, and maintain firmware programming and production test systems.
• Develop and maintain automated and manual test procedures for firmware validation (LabVIEW, Python, or similar).
• Provide sustaining engineering support for existing Diver-line products in production.
• Collaborate with AEM’s hardware and test engineering teams on test-fixture design, validation, and deployment.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Act as the primary firmware representative for Van Essen Instruments within AEM’s wider engineering organization.
• Coordinate closely with hardware engineering, software engineering, product management, and compliance teams to define requirements, schedules, and deliverables.
• Partner with Lambrecht Meteo (Göttingen) for hardware, testing, security, and certification alignment.
• Support QA and compliance documentation to meet RED and NIS2 expectations.

Project and Process Leadership

• Plan and coordinate firmware development milestones and release activities.
• Maintain firmware repositories in GitHub Enterprise using CI/CD and release-control practices.
• Contribute to design reviews, risk assessments, and cybersecurity audits.
• Guide internal and external collaborators in secure coding, testing, and manufacturing practices.

This job description may not be inclusive of all assigned duties, responsibilities, or aspects of the job described, and may