Senior Firmware Test Engineer

At Halter were on a mission to enable farmers and graziers to run the most productive and sustainable operations. Our customers are using Halter to break free from the time-intensive constraints of conventional practices. Imagine watching 500 cattle stand up and walk calmly towards their next break No quad bikes no dogs no fences. Just a group of cattle walking at their own pace. People say it looks like magic. Our customers are revolutionizing grazing with Halter. Its changing lives and transforming an industry. People join Halter to do meaningful work. By joining us youll be solving challenging problems within a talented team and a culture built for high performance. Our team out-think out-work and out-care. Were committed to delivering real change in the world - this isnt easy and in truth we love that its hard.

Were backed to deliver on a mission that matters by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund Bessemer Venture Partners BOND DCVC Blackbird Promus Ventures Rocket Labs Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures.

To find out more visit our LinkedIn & Instagram.

Were looking for a Firmware Test Engineer to join our Device Platform team and help us prove rigorously and repeatably at fleet scale that our collar firmware does exactly what its supposed to. This isnt a role tacked onto the end of development. Youll be embedded with the firmware and hardware engineers building the collar catching problems on the bench before they ever reach a paddock and building the automation that means we dont have to find the same bug twice.

Our team out-thinks out-works and out-cares. Were committed to delivering real change in the world. This isnt easy and honestly we love that its hard.

Halter is one system: hardware software and AI running live on real farms. Our engineering teams own different slices of that system but the problems all rhyme:

• Turning thousands of collars and billions of sensor events into a single calm decision in a farmers hand.

• Modelling the physical world (animals pasture terrain) accurately enough to act on in real time.

• Building mobile and web experiences that hold up at 5am whilst out in a paddock in the rain.

• Designing platforms and pipelines that scale with our incredible pace of growth without the seams showing.

• Engineering against constrained hardware flaky rural connectivity and the messiness of the physical world and shipping with pace despite it.

Every team here ships software that has to work in a paddock not just a browser tab.

• Get hands-on with real collar hardware (GPS LoRa mesh cellular BLE sensors) and build the test rigs and automation that put it through its paces.

• Design and own test strategies for our collar firmware from low-level FreeRTOS behaviour up through to the data it produces in the cloud.

• Build automated regression and hardware-in-the-loop test frameworks (Python) and wire them into our CI/CD pipeline so every firmware release gets solid consistent coverage before it goes anywhere near an animal.

• Chase problems all the way down: from a weird signal on a collar through the LoRa/cellular uplink through protobuf-encoded payloads into Athena and Elasticsearch. Youll need to be comfortable following the trail wherever it leads.

• Dig into field and fleet data (Grafana Athena Elasticsearch) to spot regressions and reliability issues that only show up once youre running thousands of collars in the real world not just on the bench.

• Work directly with firmware engineers to turn this seems flaky into a clear reproducible defect with a root cause.

• Help us mature our testing culture as a growing team: better test plans better regression coverage better release confidence.

• Experience testing embedded firmware or software for a real physical product. Bonus points if it had to survive somewhere hostile.

• Strong automation chops in Python and youve built or maintained a test framework from the ground up before not just used one.

• Youre just as comfortable with a debugger and a bench setup as you are writing test code. UART SPI I2C JTAG dont scare you.

• Youve got CI/CD pipelines wired into your workflow already.

• Youre a sharp troubleshooter. You form hypotheses test them and know when to loop in the engineer who wrote the code.

• You work well in a fast-moving Agile team and dont wait to be told what to test next.

• Experience with LoRa/LoRaWAN BLE or cellular IoT (LTE-M/NB-IoT).

• Protobuf or similar binary serialisation especially around schema compatibility.

• AWS experience (Athena Elasticsearch Lambda EventBridge Grafana).

• FreeRTOS or other RTOS environments.

• Genuine curiosity about farming animal welfare or hardware that has to work outdoors unattended on a live animal. We can teach the domain but the curiosity has to be there already.

• Delicious snacks and drinks are available for your daily flow.

• Healthy body healthy mind. Were partnered with Southern Cross Health Insurance to support your well-being.

• We offer 6 months of fully paid parental leave for primary caregivers 4 weeks of fully paid secondary caregiver leave and many other parental benefits that support you and your family.

• Our personal growth is important. Halter offers an annual $1000 self-development budget to be used for anything that fuels personal growth.

• Our time to recharge is valued were offered wellness leave and unlimited paid annual leave.

• Importantly we offer an inclusive and attractive remuneration package made up of salary benefits and an employee stock ownership plan.

Theres a reason you visit your friends in person live with your family and dont do dinners over Zoom. Humans are wired for connection. We believe a world-class in-person office culture is the best way for high-performing teams.

Being office first is a core pillar of our culture. We believe in-person connections are key to driving your own growth learning impact and building genuine long-lasting relationships. Strong relationships make it easier to disagree give feedback and do meaningful and aligned work. We dont like having heaps of rules or policies but this means having strong trusted relationships is critical.

Were office first not office only. This means working from the office everyday is our default setting but we flex when we need to. We have a high-trust culture so everyone is trusted to do whats best for Halter.

Our office vibe is something special its hard to describe until youre here but people at Halter who have come from fully remote or hybrid companies say they could never go back - the high energy and spectacular people they are now surrounded by everyday makes work so enjoyable. Your growth your learning and your impact is truly unlimited here and a big part of that comes from being together solving problems innovating building context and constantly learning from each other.

Halter is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive workplace a place where we can each be ourselves and do the best work of our lives. Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the requirements women and under-represented groups of candidates tend to only apply when they meet every requirement. If you think you have what it takes but dont necessarily tick every requirement on this job description please still get in touch and apply to Halter. Wed love to chat to see if youll be an epic fit!

If this opportunity sounds like you please apply below by sending through your cover letter explaining why youre excited about this role and working at Halter along with your CV and well be in touch!

Please also feel free to check out the careers page for more information on working at Halter and dont forget to follow us on LinkedIn & Instagram.

• Work that genuinely matters. Every now and again a company comes along that transforms an entire industry and leaves the world in a better place. Our team gets to be part of something truly meaningful helping farmers improve their livelihoods spend more time with their families and build more sustainable operations.

• Spectacular people solving hard problems. Our culture is designed for talented people to do work that changes lives. The team is filled with diverse kind and driven people who push each other to do their best work. Youll be thrown into the deep end tackling complex challenges and building something tangible that solves real problems.

• Youll grow here. Autonomy mastery and learning define how we work. Youll have the freedom to work on interesting problems master new skills and continuously develop yourself both through your role and our $1000 personal growth fund.

• This isnt easy and we love that its hard. Working at Halter will be the most rewarding and the most challenging work of your life. We move fast take bold bets and work hard to reshape an entire industry. As one team member put it: Joining Halter is a bit like strapping yourself to a rocket ship but its an epic journey to be a part of!

Required Experience:

Senior IC