Embedded Software Engineer– Technical Lead at Boston Engineering Corporation
Waltham, MA
$150,000–$175,000from the description
Jul 5, 2026
Waltham, MA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A technical leadership position focused on embedded firmware engineering — not general software development — for robotics, autonomous, and maritime platforms. Day-to-day work involves RTOS-based firmware, hardware bring-up, driver development, schematic review, and bench-level debugging alongside electrical and mechanical teams. Suited to an experienced embedded engineer ready to set technical direction, mentor others, and serve as the escalation point for complex hardware-software integration challenges.
Senior level · 7+ years · Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA · Secret clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $169,742 (middle half $134,780–$187,781). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (9)
The title is 'Technical Lead' with no explicit seniority level word; the title states no level. The 7+ years overall / 3+ years senior-or-lead requirement and the scope (technical escalation point, architecture ownership, mentoring) support a Senior classification.
The JD states 'Ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance' as a requirement. This is treated as a hard gate on the ability to obtain a clearance; the level is not specified but the defense/export-controlled context suggests Secret-level at minimum.
Degree requirement: BS is listed as 'acceptable' and MS as 'preferred.' Because a BS is explicitly accepted, no minimum degree is hard-gated — equivalent experience is implicitly sufficient given the consulting/engineering context, so the degree requirement is set to None.
Hardware interfaces (I2C, SPI, UART, Ethernet, GPIO) are listed together in the Qualifications section and treated as a collective hard gate on low-level hardware interface experience.
Networking stack debugging is called 'a strong plus,' maritime/robotics/uncrewed/military platform experience is 'highly desirable,' and navigation/sensor fusion/autonomy exposure is 'a plus' — all treated as preferred.
Bonus Attributes (ML/computer vision/AI, Agile/DevOps, safety-critical practices, proposal development, QMS) are explicitly labeled as bonus and treated as preferred.
CI/CD and ISO 9001/CMMI appear under 'Familiarity with…' and 'desirable' language in the Qualifications section, indicating preferred rather than hard-gated skills.
ROS2 appears both as an RTOS alternative in the required section and as a standalone preferred skill for robotics context; it is captured once as an alternative to FreeRTOS in the required RTOS skill.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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