The role
Magnet power supplies, cryogenic temperature monitors, and level meters connect to customer test environments over serial, USB, and Ethernet, and more of that traffic moves onto a network every year. This role owns the software that makes it work, from the firmware running on the microcontroller to the driver running on the customer's PC.
You'll be the technical authority on firmware architecture, microprocessor and module integration, connectivity, and product cybersecurity. Where outside specialists make sense, you decide that and direct the work rather than absorbing all of it yourself. You'll report to the Engineering Manager and work day to day with our electronics engineer, applications engineers, and service group.
Parts of our firmware have been maintained by capable generalists for years, and some of it predates the connectivity we now ship. Part of this job is deciding what to carry forward, what to rebuild, and in what order, then making that case to people who will ask you to justify it.
Connected instruments also do not stop needing attention once they ship. Modules meet their EOL, operating systems get patched, and vulnerabilities get published. Maintenance after release is a permanent part of this role, not an afterthought.
What you'll do
- Own firmware architecture across the instrument line, including microprocessor communication, peripheral and module integration, and the structure that keeps new features from breaking old ones
- Develop and maintain embedded firmware in C and C++ for instrument control, measurement, and communication
- Integrate and maintain network connectivity, including Digi modules and Ethernet interfaces, across module firmware and operating system updates
- Own product cybersecurity, including our internal risk assessment, the working relationship with TUV for vulnerability analysis and penetration testing, and a secure, authenticated path for field updates
- Develop and maintain host-side software and instrument drivers in C# or Python for customer test environments
- Define and maintain instrument command sets and remote interfaces, including SCPI over serial, USB, and Ethernet
- Support board bring-up with the electronics engineer, from first power-on through validation
- Establish firmware release practice, including version control, reproducible builds, release notes, field update procedure, and traceability to product and board revision
- Triage escalated field issues involving firmware, connectivity, or host software, and drive fixes back into the released product
- Judge when a problem warrants an outside specialist, scope that work, and hold the vendor to it
Required qualifications
- Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field
- 7+ years of professional embedded development, including at least one connected product you shipped and then maintained in the field
- Strong C and C++ on microcontrollers, including peripheral configuration, interrupts, real-time control loops, and serial protocols such as UART, SPI, and I2C
- Demonstrated ownership of firmware architecture, not feature work alone. You should be able to describe a system you structured and why you structured it that way
- Experience with network-connected embedded devices, including TCP/IP stacks, sockets, and Ethernet or serial device servers
- Working understanding of embedded security practice, including authenticated firmware update, credential and key handling, attack surface reduction, and the common vulnerability classes that affect instruments on a customer network
- Host-side development in at least one of C#, Python, or LabVIEW, with experience producing drivers others depend on
- Able to read a schematic and a datasheet, and to debug with an oscilloscope or logic analyzer instead of guessing
- Git or comparable version control, used in a released-product context rather than personal projects
- Willing to work inside legacy code you did not write and improve it incrementally without breaking instruments already in the field
- Clear written communication. The person in this seat writes the documentation everyone else relies on
- Able to work on-site in Oak Ridge, TN full time
Preferred qualifications
- Experience with cryogenics, superconducting magnets, or scientific instrumentation
- Digi modules or comparable embedded device servers and cellular or Ethernet gateways
- Embedded Linux or an RTOS such as FreeRTOS, Zephyr, or Yocto-based builds
- SCPI and IEEE-488 instrument command conventions
- Secure development lifecycle practice, threat modeling, or prior work with a third-party test lab such as TUV
- Automated test for firmware, including hardware-in-the-loop or regression test on real instruments
- Product safety and EMC compliance such as IEC 61010 or CE marking, from the software side
- Precision measurement or data acquisition, including sensor linearization and calibration data handling
- Practical LLM use in a technical context
Growth and tooling
This is the senior technical seat for embedded and connected products at Cryomagnetics. You'd be defining how we build firmware rather than following someone else's pattern, on a product portfolio small enough to hold in your head. Superconducting magnet and cryogenic measurement work also builds domain expertise that few employers can teach. We encourage practical use of our internal AI tooling for development, test, and documentation work, within defined procedures for handling proprietary design data. Performance is reviewed at six months, at twelve months, and annually after that, with pay and responsibilities moving alongside demonstrated capability.
Compensation and benefits
Salary is dependent on experience, full-time exempt. Health, dental, vision and life insurance, 401(k) contribution matching, and a competitive PTO policy.
We've built superconducting magnets and cryogenic systems in Oak Ridge for more than 40 years. Our systems end up in universities, national labs, and industrial facilities worldwide. We enable research for cyclotron resonance, ion trapping, materials science, medical devices, quantum computing, energy, gyrotron development, and more. We pioneered cryogen-free magnet systems and build nearly everything in-house, seeing projects through from design to delivery.
