Principal Firmware Engineer

About Cala

At Cala, we’re working to free people from the burden of chronic disease. We began by creating the first non-invasive prescription therapy for hand tremor. After years of careful fine-tuning and improvements, we released Cala kIQ — our most sophisticated therapy yet. Our products have empowered thousands of people to get back to their lives with confidence and ease.

But we won’t stop there. Our pioneering technology can be applied across neurology, cardiology, and so much more. It’s all part of our mission to help people in their struggle with chronic disease. We’re only just getting started.

The Opportunity

The Principal Firmware Engineer will work with an experienced product development team and be responsible for design, development, testing and driving continuous improvements for our revolutionary health products. The role will work on the stack from hardware support to the application itself, leading the development of new firmware technology on low power, wearable embedded systems. The role will be heavy on individual contribution of firmware development and medical device design controls documentation. This role will also provide support, mentorship, and technical leadership to more junior firmware and systems engineers. The Principal Firmware Engineer will report to the VP Technology.

The compensation range for this role is market driven, with a salary range of $160,000 - $200,000. Additionally, we offer a robust benefits package. This offering is aligned with our overall compensation philosophy. 

A Day in the Life

• Assist in component selection process, particularly as it pertains to low power applications


• Develop application and system drivers


• Medical device design controls and documentation – support audits, risk analysis, requirements, test plans/reports, phase reviews, cybersecurity best practices; support regulatory submissions and updates


• Develop support for hardware / peripherals including IMU/motion sensors, flash memory, analog hardware, wireless communication


• Develop system technologies, such as logging/data management and transport


• Efficiently implement data processing algorithms


• Implement user interfaces (low-power display)


• Optimize code for low-power applications


• Develop software accessories for interacting with the embedded systems, such as manufacturing/provisioning tools, fleet management, or patient/physician facing applications


• Participate in team code reviews

Skills and Experience

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Electrical Engineering


• Agile software development within a phase-gated ISO13485 medical device quality system


• 10+ years working in firmware applications for wearables and ultra low-power / small footprint design


• Experience with microcontrollers, including ARM Cortex M0, M3, M4


• Display driver development, incorporating UI flows into state machine


• Familiarity with cybersecurity vulnerability identification and penetration testing


• Experience with IoT fleet management, especially over-the-air FW updates


• Experience with relevant radio/RF technologies such as WiFi, NFC, BTLE, LTE/5G cellular modem


• Joint hardware/FW debugging (EE design/development experience a plus)


• Excellent C programming skills and proficiency in Python; comfort across multiple programming languages and platforms is a plus.


• Experience developing within various RTOS’s such as Zephyr, Linux, freeRTOS, and comparable systems.


• Excellent communication skills and comfort interfacing across cross-functional teams.

Cala Health believes our success is based on diversity of people, teams and thinking. We offer all employees the tools, training and mentoring they need to succeed. Our selection process is driven by the key requirements for the role rather than bias or discrimination on the basis of a candidate’s sex, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, non-jobrelated disability/handicap or medical condition, family status, sexual orientation, religion, color, ethnicity, race or any other legally protected classification.