Senior Electrical / Embedded Engineer - Sensor Systems

Zooly Labs, Inc

Boulder, CO, USA

Published: 6/14/2022

Technology

Full Time

Job Description

What you'll actually own

You own the electronics and embedded firmware that make Zooly's sensing real. Every measurement a surgeon relies on starts with your hardware: the sensors you choose, the boards you design, the firmware you write, and the signal quality you fight for. This is the shared electrical and embedded platform across our hip, knee, and shoulder products, and it has to be small, reliable, and manufacturable, not just a lab prototype. The best designs here are creative and simple at once. If our sensing is accurate and trustworthy in the operating room, it will be because you built the electronics that get it there.

Where the business is 12 months after you join

If this hire goes the way we intend, one year from now:

There is a reliable, scalable sensor electronics platform that the hip, knee, and shoulder products all build on.

Verified hardware is supporting pilot builds and cadaver or clinical studies, with signal quality you can defend.

There are clear production-test and calibration strategies, so units come off the line trustworthy and repeatable.

Component, power, communication, and signal-quality risk is understood and designed out, not discovered late.

About Zooly

Zooly Labs is on a mission to make advanced surgical guidance more accessible for joint replacement surgery. Joint replacement can restore mobility and quality of life, yet surgeons often have limited objective information during the procedure to assess joint behavior and guide decisions. We build AI-guided technology that combines intelligent sensing, real-time data, and decision support with familiar surgical workflows and standard instruments, without large capital equipment. We are an early-stage company building a scalable platform across hip, knee, and shoulder.

How we work at Zooly

Patient-driven. Design-obsessed. We're an in-person team of curious, driven people who care about getting the details right, because there's a patient on the table counting on us. A few beliefs shape how we build, and this role lives at the center of them.

Master your craft. We invest in people who go deep. There is no ceiling that forces a great engineer or designer into management to advance. Go as far into your craft as you want.

Act like an owner. We take responsibility for our decisions and how we communicate, we think long-term, and we bias toward action.

Build it together. We want people who want to be in the room, solving hard problems face to face. The camaraderie is not a perk, it is how we do our best work.

What this role is really like

This is a hands-on role at a fast-growing startup racing real deadlines. You will spec a sensor and lay out a board one week, bring it up on the bench with a logic analyzer the next, and write the FreeRTOS firmware that runs it. You own the whole chain from schematic to shipped, tested hardware. If you want to hand firmware to someone else and stay in CAD, this is not the role. If you want to own sensing end to end, it is.

What you'll do

Define the electrical architecture for sensor modules, instrument attachments, communication devices, and test equipment.

Select and integrate IMUs, force, pressure, strain, position, optical, electromagnetic, and other sensors.

Design schematics, PCB layouts, power systems, batteries, protection circuits, wireless interfaces, and debug/programming interfaces.

Own Zooly's embedded C/C++ codebase, including FreeRTOS, interrupt handling, drivers, acquisition timing, calibration, communication, diagnostics, and power management.

Plan and run characterization, signal-integrity, power, environmental, reliability, and EMC-related testing.

Build the production-test and calibration methods, qualify suppliers, and drive design transfer.

Work with PCB fabricators, contract manufacturers, and component suppliers to take custom electronics from prototype to production.

What you need to be able to do

These are capabilities, not credentials. If you can do these things, we want to talk regardless of how many years it took you to get here.

You have taken embedded electronics or sensor systems from concept through verification and manufacturing transfer.

You are strong across system architecture, schematic capture, PCB design and layout review, component selection, board bring-up, debugging, and design verification.

You have hands-on expertise with sensors, microcontrollers, analog/digital interfaces, power management, batteries, low-power design, and wireless (BLE, Wi-Fi).

You can characterize signal quality, noise, timing, power, drift, calibration, and unit-to-unit variation with the right lab equipment and statistics.

You have led component trade studies balancing performance, size, cost, supply chain, manufacturability, and regulatory risk.

You are strong in embedded C/C++ for high-performance, real-time, multi-sensor firmware, ideally with FreeRTOS, and comfortable with JTAG/SWD debugging.

You have programmed ESP32, STM32, or similar chipsets, and you are comfortable with Linux, command-line tools, and Python scripting.

A degree in electrical, computer, or biomedical engineering is common in people who do this well, but the ability above matters more than the diploma.

What would make you a strong fit

Medical-device electronics experience and working knowledge of design controls, ISO 14971, EMC/EMI, electrical and battery safety, and wireless coexistence.

Experience with miniature or disposable electronics, flex circuits, custom sensor packaging, force/pressure sensors, IMUs, or low-power wireless.

Experience with AWS IoT Core and fleet management, including OTA updates.

Experience taking custom electronics through EVT/DVT-style builds, formal verification, pilot production, and production test.

Experience with sterilization-compatible or sealed sensor products and close mechanical/electrical co-design.

How this role works with the rest of the team

You are the electronics and embedded anchor for the whole company. You work directly with the engineers building each joint product and the software and data engineers who consume your signals, turning product needs into reusable sensor hardware everyone can build on. You will also mentor the other electrical and embedded engineers, including the team in India. A shared platform means you can go deep on the hard sensing problems instead of rebuilding the basics three times.

Stay curious

We hire curious people. The kind who took things apart as kids and never stopped asking how things work. If that sounds like you, we'd love to meet.

The fine print

Zooly Labs is an equal opportunity employer and evaluates candidates without regard to legally protected characteristics. Responsibilities will evolve as the company and product portfolio grow. This is an in-office role in Boulder, CO. The role may require occasional travel to design labs, surgeon meetings, suppliers, cadaver studies, or clinical sites. Compensation, equity, benefits, and work-authorization details will be discussed directly.