Being a Hardware Engineer at Balena
Our mission at balena is to accelerate the path to a programmable world, by reducing the friction that fleet owners, our users, face when building, deploying, and scaling fleets of connected devices. Hardware is a big component of that friction, which we address by designing hardware with a focus on addressing user pain and improving the developer experience.
We aim to develop an ecosystem of devices that together, and when combined with our software products, make developing, testing, deploying, and scaling an IoT project seamless. Our current areas of focus are the balenaFin and balenaEtcher Pro.
As a Hardware Engineer at balena, you will research, design, develop and test hardware products. Hardware design at balena doesn’t exist in an isolated environment. You will be working amongst a team of engineers and product leaders with expertise ranging from PCB design to firmware and software engineering and more and will have access to a wide variety of resources to help make our hardware products successful.
Our hardware design process resembles that of scalable software;continuous integration, rapid prototyping, and predefined tests. We look for creative, first principles solutions to hardware problems and don’t follow a playbook.
Responsibilities
- Define functional product and budget requirements of target system designs
- Research the best components on the market based on cost, performance, layout requirements, and availability.
- Produce complete designs of hardware systems: schematics, PCB layout, and testing instructions.
- Assist the teams in building software support for our hardware products by providing information and guidance regarding the designed system
- Design, architect, and own the execution of your projects from start to finish
- Handle hardware-related RMA tasks such as information gathering and investigation
- Help support agents with tickets related to electronics and hardware product issues
- Collaborate, brainstorm, and coordinate work with the broader team
Requirements
- Passion for solving problems from first principles. Blindly following industry standards only gets you standard products.
- Product-focused approach to designing systems. You consider the UX implications of your designs and understand how they fit into the broader vision
- Self-discipline to take on a project and push it to completion without too much management. You also know when to ask for help.
- Strong problem-solving abilities. You know how to split a complex problem into incremental pieces and make progress.
- Knowledge and experience working with modern eCAD platforms (Kicad and Altium preferred)
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, and fluency in English
Bonus points
- Knowledge of version control systems such as git and Github
- Familiarity with embedded Linux (e.g. experience with kernel driver development)
- Experience with hardware debugging and manufacturing tools (oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, pick and place machine, etc)
- Experience with electronic devices certification processes for North America and the EU (FCC, IC, RED, etc)
Make sure to let us know if any of these items apply to you!
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