Embedded Software Engineer Job Description, Skills, and Salary
Are you searching for an embedded software engineer job description? Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of an embedded software engineer. Feel free to use our embedded software engineer job description template to produce your own embedded software engineer job description. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as an embedded software engineer.
Who is an Embedded Software Engineer?
An embedded software engineer is a professional who develops computer software for equipment or gadgets that aren’t always thought of as computers. Embedded software engineers are responsible for the creation and maintenance of software systems that are integrated into actual physical devices.
Similarly, these Embedded software engineers specialize in building software for non-computer hardware.
Engineers of embedded software are in charge of designing and managing software for embedded devices such as routers, smartwatches, televisions, and hybrid cars. Other common instances of embedded software are traffic lights, MRI scanners, automotive computers, and point-of-sale systems in retail locations. Because of these machines’ versatility and extensive use for a variety of reasons, embedded software engineering skills are in high demand.
Additionally, embedded software engineers are involved at every stage of the development of embedded software, from writing the code to conducting the device’s final testing and implementation. To accomplish this, embedded software engineers must understand the mechanics of the hardware as well as the right interactions between the software and hardware.
As the Internet of Things and smart wearable technology gain popularity, good embedded software engineers are in high demand. An embedded software engineer understands chip datasheets and how they relate to the code created for them. Embedded software is normally self-contained and runs a single program.
To work as an embedded software engineer, you typically require a bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a closely related field. Programming knowledge and prior experience are also essential, in addition to proficiency in the tools and software required for embedding and updating systems.
Moreso, an embedded software engineer often needs a solid technical background in software engineering as well as a basic understanding of electronics. They can operate constructively in a team setting, communicate well, and adapt rapidly to a new team. They are also highly analytical, problem-solving, and collaborative.
Embedded software engineers often spend most of their days in an office setting, either sitting at a computer terminal or attending meetings. They may be required to travel in order to attend briefings, provide support, and gather user requirements. They frequently work closely with other hardware and software professionals, such as architects, technical leads, and QA engineers.
Embedded Software Engineer Job Description
What is an embedded software engineer job description? an embedded software engineer job description is simply a list of duties and responsibilities of an embedded software engineer in an organization. Below are the embedded software engineer job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write an embedded software engineer job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.
Embedded software engineers are responsible for the following duties and responsibilities:
- Creating and designing software for embedded organizations and devices.
- Assessing and valuing the capacity, balance, and scalability of system resources.
- Examining the embedded system requirements and identifying those that include a software component
- Examining hardware and software to improve systems and put upgrades in place.
- Examining the software’s structure and scalability.
- Installing the embedded system and decoding error messages.
- Engaging with experts from other domains, such as electrical, to ensure that the embedded software achieves its objectives.
- Giving technical leadership to the team to ensure deadlines and goals are accomplished.
- Developing test processes and strategies, carrying out tests, and reporting results to management.
- Preserving technical expertise and passing it on to other members of the team.
- Conducting System optimization and fixing of bugs.
- Creating, building, testing, and debugging software for computers, servers, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other computing devices maintaining the software.
- Ensuring that software application’s values are recorded.
- Analyzing other programmers’ documentation to ensure that it is correct and complete developing functions for software that are derived from software needs.
- Ensuring that writing or coding software is accomplished by directly inserting the software instructions.
Qualifications
- Bachelor of Science in engineering or computer science.
- A license from a provincial or territorial professional engineering association is essential.
- Good problem-solving skills.
- Exceptional team member knowledge of peer review, defect tracking, and software configuration management technologies.
- Solid comprehension of operating system coding approaches.
- Extensive experience in C and C++ coding.
- Understanding of IP protocols, hardware interfaces, and modern OS development approaches.
- Understanding of the complete lifecycle of an embedded software system.
- Grasp of software and hardware architecture, as well as debugging.
- Experience working with embedded environments, schematics, traces, and board-level debugging.
- Excellent communication and project management ability.
- Exceptional writing and documentation skills.
Essential Skills
To be successful as an embedded software engineer, you must have a specific set of technical and soft abilities. These hard skills will help you to successfully carry out your professional tasks and deal with unexpected work-related obstacles, whereas the soft skills will allow you to collaborate with your counterparts. These technical and soft talents include, but are not limited to the following:
- Coding skills:
Engineers that work with embedded systems must be fluent in at least one programming or scripting languages, such as C or C++. Coding skills is required for embedded software engineers to debug codes, integrate database updates, and automate as well as deploy operations. Assembly language proficiency is the most common qualification for this role. It is also recommended that you be familiar with additional languages such as ADA, Labview, Rust, Lua, Python, Verilog, and VHDL.
- Analysis skills:
Embedded software engineers may need to employ a large amount of product data and information to build efficient solutions. They frequently need to consider multiple data points and sources, and they may need to analyze the data to make it legible. As a result, having a rudimentary understanding of analytical models and techniques might be beneficial to embedded software engineers.
Debugging is the process of locating and correcting software flaws. As an embedded software engineer, you must be able to debug code on a daily basis. Debugging can be done on your own code as well as code created by others. You may troubleshoot code running on a computer or a machine like a car.
- Communication abilities:
Embedded software engineers work with a variety of professionals from production, hardware, software, management, and product design. To share comments and work as a team, embedded software engineers must collaborate with other engineers. Furthermore, they may be needed to keep detailed records and documentation of their methods, which necessitates great written communication skills.
- Microprocessor Ecosystems:
You must be knowledgeable about Arduino, Atmel AVR, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 NodeMcu, and PIC10Fxx in order to be an embedded software engineer.
- Memory Management:
Every embedded software engineer should have a solid understanding of the various forms of memory, such as RAM, ROM, and Flash, as well as design software when memory is a crucial requirement.
- Circuit Design skills:
As an embedded software engineer you should become acquainted with printed circuit boards (PCBs), signal analysis, assembly, and testing of integrated circuits and their components. Moreso,. Allegro and Sigrity PCB design and analysis software should be familiar to you.
- 3D modeling skills:
Make sure you’re comfortable designing hardware with CAD programs like AutoCAD and SolidWorks.
- Detail-oriented observation:
The process of developing software systems for embedded devices has numerous moving parts and variables. Focus, vigilance, and attention to detail are required for the job and can help you avoid costly mistakes. Engineers working on embedded systems can keep their solutions and products of high quality by using precise measurements and values.
- Hardware knowledge:
An embedded software engineer must understand how computers are built and how their various parts work together. You could be in charge of selecting the right hardware for a project and ensuring that it works properly. As an embedded software engineer you can use your hardware expertise to troubleshoot existing systems.
- Measurement Instruments knowledge:
You should be able to analyze and troubleshoot systems using digital multimeters, data acquisition units, and oscilloscopes.
- Internet of Things:
Knowledge of IoT platforms and devices such as Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Watson, and AWS is advantageous to every embedded software engineer in this 21st century.
- Data processing and analysis SKills:
As an embedded software engineer you have to possess data processing and analysis skills. This can be seen in your excellent ability to use software data processing software such as Excel, Python, and Matlab among others.
- Technical Writing skills:
Writing technical information consumes a substantial amount of time of an embedded software engineer. However, your proficiency in technical writing makes it less stressful and time-consuming. Additionally, It would be advantageous if you could also write research grants.
- Networking and security:
To ensure the security of the manufacturing environment at all stages of the product cycle, an embedded software engineer must also have a working knowledge of networking concepts.
- Allocation and management of resources:
Dealing with practical limitations will be a significant portion of your responsibilities as an embedded software engineer. You must consider how much of your hardware is being used by the embedded system. This includes cycles from the CPU, ROM, and RAM. These must be used and distributed as effectively as possible. It is critical in this line of work to weigh the benefits and drawbacks while also determining which tasks are most important.
- Allocation and management of resources:
Dealing with practical limitations will be a significant portion of your responsibilities as an embedded software engineer. You must consider how much of your hardware is being used by the embedded system. This includes cycles from the CPU, ROM, and RAM. These must be used and distributed as effectively as possible. It is critical in this line of work to weigh the benefits and drawbacks while also determining which tasks are most important.
- Problem-solving Skills:
With problem-solving abilities, you can identify problems and find solutions. As an embedded software engineer, you may be in charge of troubleshooting software issues. You can improve the quality of your work and shorten project completion times by being able to identify the root cause of an issue and find a solution.
How to Become an Embedded Software Engineer
You must first determine whether or not becoming an embedded software engineer is the right career path for you. More importantly, you must decide whether you are enthusiastic about working on cutting-edge technology and enjoy solving difficult technical problems. If you are certain that this is the career for you, here is what you will need to get started:
- Education:
To work as an embedded software engineer, you’ll most likely need a bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, or electronics engineering. Some employers may prefer to hire candidates who have a graduate degree in one of the aforementioned disciplines or graduates with a focus on embedded systems engineering or design.
However, you can pursue a bachelor’s or associate’s degree.
With an associate’s degree, you can learn about basic computer operations and software development. An associate’s degree can be obtained in as little as one to two years. A bachelor’s degree is frequently the absolute minimum requirement for any job involving software. Through certain degree programs, you may learn computer programming languages and become acquainted with the elements of software and hardware development.
Some employers will hire an embedded software engineer with many years of relevant experience and a resume that clearly demonstrates the necessary skills and qualities without requiring them to have a university degree. Those who are employed without a degree are typically required to work as paid interns or apprentices until they can demonstrate that they have learned the necessary skills.
- Choose an Industry Specialization:
As an embedded software engineer, you may be required to specialize in your field. Choose the area of embedded software engineering in which you have the most confidence, and then take proactive steps to advance in that area. You can choose to specialize in the Industrial Internet of Things, embedded interface design, or embedded sensors and motors.
- Train to gain more experience:
Finishing an internship program or taking additional software engineering courses may be beneficial. An internship can help you put academic course material into practice while also expanding your knowledge of coding languages. It is also necessary to be familiar with coding languages, so you may want to consider taking additional classes to learn how to use and code correctly. This is because embedded systems frequently contain multiple types of code.
- Become an Entry-Level Embedded Software Engineer:
After earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a closely related field, you’ll typically begin your career as an entry-level embedded software engineer. An embedded software engineer typically has a four-year bachelor’s degree in a related field.
- Consider obtaining certifications:
Depending on the type of embedded software engineer role you want to pursue, you might want to consider earning certification.
Certifications can provide specialized knowledge of specific aspects of an embedded system to help you streamline the design, development, and testing phases of an embedded system. Certifications can also help you support other aspects of software development by helping you understand and use programming languages to create code. Certain employers or hiring managers may require certifications to demonstrate your proficiency with code and embedded systems.
Part-time, short-term diploma programs in embedded systems are available. Individual certifications can also be obtained to gain knowledge in embedded systems disciplines such as electronics, circuit design, and C programming. These courses, which may last a few weeks or months, can be completed after earning your bachelor’s degree. Specialized certification programs in data processing, assembly, and cloud computing are also beneficial.
- Prepare a resume:
If you have relevant professional experience, transferable skills, and educational credentials, you can create a resume. Use an appropriate format to highlight your hard and soft skills. Add an executive summary to the top of your resume to provide hiring managers and recruiters with a quick overview of your job application.
- Apply for jobs:
Look for embedded software engineering positions on online job boards and on company websites. You can also speak with leading employers from a variety of industries to learn more about openings and relevant job opportunities. Remember to send a personalized cover letter with each job application.
- Advance in Your Embedded Software Engineer Career:
After entry level, there are several levels in the Embedded Software Engineer career path. It may take two years to advance to the next seniority level position for an entry-level embedded software engineer. You will need approximately two years of experience at each level for each advanced embedded software engineer position to advance in your career.
To advance your career as an embedded software engineer, you may need to take additional courses, obtain a graduate degree (such as a Master’s Degree), or obtain specialized certifications. Depending on the hiring manager and the amount of experience you have, a master’s degree can provide you with additional training and help you improve your skills.
Where to Work as an Embedded Software Engineer
Embedded software engineers are employed on a part-time, full-time, or contract basis by a variety of small, medium-sized, and large companies, including:
- Telecommunications companies
- Electronics companies
- Software companies
- Hardware companies
- Production equipment companies
- Automation and control solutions companies
- Software marketing and distribution companies
- Communications Service Providers (CSPs)
- Network policy control companies
- Consulting companies that provide software-related services
- Colleges and universities
- Information technology
- Healthcare sector
- Automotive industry
- Construction industry
Embedded Software Engineer Salary Scale
Embedded software engineers are in high demand right now. The salary of embedded software engineers varies depending on their level of education, experience, employer size and type, specific job duties, and a variety of other factors.
According to Glassdoor.com, the average yearly salary for an embedded software engineer in the United States is around $83,000 USD