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Senior Firmware Engineer

Tin Can · Seattle · On-site

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About Tin Can

The super-magical Wi-Fi landline for kids. No screens, no texting, no strangers — just real conversation with Grandma, besties, and contacts you approve. Plug in, twirl that cord, and time-travel to pure voice fun. Backed by Greylock.

About the role

We're looking for a Senior Firmware Engineer to own the software that lives on every Tin Can. Our devices are the front line of the experience families feel most — how clearly a call sounds, and whether the phone just works when a kid picks it up to call Grandma. The firmware runs on ESP32 hardware and powers everything from connecting to Wi-Fi to placing a call to 911.

What they're looking for

  • 5+ years building and shipping firmware for connected devices, ideally in C/C++ on resource-constrained microcontrollers (ESP32/Espressif a big plus)
  • You've shipped firmware to real devices in the field and owned over-the-air updates — staged rollouts, versioning, and failure recovery — at meaningful scale
  • Comfortable debugging across the software/hardware boundary: reading schematics, reaching for a scope or logic analyzer, and reasoning about audio (I2S), Wi-Fi/BLE, power, and reset behavior
  • A reliability mindset — you think in terms of what's reproducible, testable, and reversible, and you instrument things so you know what's really happening in the field
  • A clear communicator who writes things down, because you want the whole team to understand the systems you build
  • A collaborative, low-ego approach — everyone here sweeps the floor
More about this role

Tin Can is building a safer, simpler way for kids to connect — without smartphones. We're creating screen-free, delightful devices and services that let families call the people who matter most, free from the noise of today's digital world.

We're building a bold, authentic, nostalgic, and kinda quirky brand that resonates with folks who want something simpler & better for their kids than the tech-infused lives we're currently living (and who have a sense of humor about it). As we gear up to scale to thousands of families, we're ready to bring on an engineer to help make it happen.

We're looking for a Senior Firmware Engineer to own the software that lives on every Tin Can. Our devices are the front line of the experience families feel most — how clearly a call sounds, and whether the phone just works when a kid picks it up to call Grandma. The firmware runs on ESP32 hardware and powers everything from connecting to Wi-Fi to placing a call to 911.

You'll be the person the rest of engineering turns to on anything device-side: how firmware gets better, how we ship updates safely across our fleet, and how we understand and improve the real-world experience of every call. You'll set...

Read the full posting on Tin Can's site ↗

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