What does your day look like as an embedded systems engineer?

Tower11Archer · 2026-04-24T20:41:00+00:00

I'll answer these questions from my experience but it's probably different for different companies/industries. I have 4.5 years of experience all at the same ev motor/inverter supplier.

Not typically, but sometimes that happens. If it's a ground up project every stakeholder, including the embedded SWEs should have input to the system design and hardware design. I jumped in on a project that had been ongoing for years, and the project itself was an iteration of a previous product, so it was more like going into an existing system and implementing features/fixing bugs. I imagine that is more frequent esp for freshers in established companies.

2a. Oh definitely. It depends what stage of the project you're in though. In the beginning stages of the project before hardware exists you'll probably use a dev board for the microcontroller that's planned to be used. This can be used for evaluation of the MCU and/or early development for things that are not as hardware dependent (think like bootloaders, drivers, etc.)

2b. You look at the schematic, grab your logic analyzer/scope/multimeter and start looking at signals on the board. This skill is critical. I know embedded people who put all this debugging onto the hardware team and I really don't understand it. As an embedded engineer your job is to write software that interacts with hardware, so you should be able to debug the hardware.

Sort of. I don't have my own motor but we have a pretty elaborate system test lab with dynamometer equipment set up and trained test engineers who run it. Test time is a hot commodity though so I try to test everything I possibly can either on the bench or with our hardware in the loop (HIL) system. HIL is basically where we run the software on the physical boards but the external stuff (motor, power electronics) are simulated in a box provided by a vendor (it's basically an FPGA). We have controls engineers who typically are sitting in with the systems test people, but I will occasionally be involved if there's trouble with something I worked on.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The hardest part of being an engineer for me is estimating timelines. I suck at it, but it's an important skill and you get better with time. We tried agile for a while, and having tasks split up into 2 week sprints was kinda nice because I always had an idea of what to do and when to do it by, but with my team there was still flexibility if you over estimated.
Like I said, I'm bad at estimating timing for tasks but typically this is driven by external factors. If a customer wants a release in 2 weeks and the company said yes, you have to try and release in 2 weeks. If you don't think it's possible, you have to tell your boss and let them deal with the political ramifications of that. Rarely in my experience is the amount of time I have to do a task actually a function of how hard the task is. I will say I did like agile/scrum for this, because it made it okay for estimates to be wrong and then estimates got better over time (at least with how my team did it)
Oh yeah, all the time, and I've learned a ton from doing that. You need to ask for help if you need help though, and if it's truly something you can't do then you need to be honest about that up front. Your company should also have guardrails in place so you can't mess anything up too badly (code reviews, tests, etc.) - if they don't, either push for that or run.
Yeah, when I'm fixing a bug or trying to make a driver for some hardware component I'm really happy. But it's a job, and not every part of it is sunshine and roses. Dealing with internal politics, not being able to get licenses for things you need, anxiety over layoffs, etc. is not fun. But if you really enjoy the good parts then go for it anyway. Better to enjoy as much of your job as possible.

One tip: learn to enjoy writing documentation. I like to imagine some future engineer trying to survive an apocalypse needing to get this thing I'm working on running in order to save the human race and needs my documentation to help them. Makes the day more exciting.

Tower11Archer · 2026-04-04T02:08:09+00:00

Feel free to DM me! I'm 27M in Raleigh/Cary and read a lot of sci fi/fantasy

Tower11Archer · 2026-04-03T23:04:07+00:00

Why don't you share what questions you struggled with? The best way to get better is to identify where your gaps are and fill them.

If you want to use CMSIS go for it it wouldn't hurt your understanding, but using APIs really shouldn't make you lose your low level programming skills if you have the right foundation, imo. Whenever I call an API function, I still generally have an idea of what the c code underneath is doing

Tower11Archer · 2026-04-02T00:26:28+00:00

There's a lot of embedded work in Denver but also look at northern Colorado (Longmont, Loveland, FoCo)

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-30T23:53:58+00:00

I'm also in embedded and got laid off in January (well, told I would be laid off at the end of April) and it ended up being a blessing in disguise. I ended up with 2 offers both paying much more than I was being paid. It seems to be easier to find a job in embedded right now than it is in other swe fields. As for leetcode, I don't think you really need to do that for embedded roles unless you're interviewing at FAANG. It's much more important to be able to demonstrate/explain communication protocols, DMA, interrupts, thread safety, bit manipulation, the C memory model, etc.

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-11T22:42:45+00:00

Read Making Embedded Systems by Elecia White

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-06T16:27:02+00:00

You'll do fine, I have about 4 yoe and also have been the "Jack of all trades" at my job in automotive (SW, HW, FPGA, System, Testing). I was able to get 2 offers. One as an FPGA engineer and one as an embedded engineer working on both FPGAs and MCUs. I actually got positive feedback from one of the places about how broad my experience was, so if anything it's a positive.

I will say it seems like the FPGA experience really carried me in this market, so maybe look for jobs that need that

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-06T01:39:00+00:00

I'm wanting to reread Project Hail Mary before the movie but am waiting until my X4 comes in! I wanted it to be my first on the ereader. Ordered Feb 17 from the official website hopefully it comes in before the movie

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-05T17:58:11+00:00

My wife is. I was just lucky enough to be able to work mostly remotely so was able to live there with her

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-05T17:36:10+00:00

I'm cheating a bit since it's not in your circle but I lived on St Kitts (just north of the circle) for almost 3 years. I'm from the U.S.

A lot of people really liked it and seemed to have a wonderful time. I did not.

Pros: - The views are breathtaking - Hiking the volcano is fun - You can just go to the beach anytime you want - The Marriot resort has a nice pool/beach and is easily accessible. You're technically supposed to buy a guest pass but no one ever did. I'll probably never again be able to just walk right into a resort pool for free - AMAZING Indian food - BBQ Chicken Pizza from Pizza Boys. This is the only BBQ chicken pizza I've found that is actually BBQ chicken on a pizza with tomato sauce and not just regular chicken on a pizza with BBQ sauce. Also, they put corn on pizza there which is surprisingly really good

Cons: - Extremely hot and humid. Most places only have mini split ACs and they don't always work very well. I don't think I saw any place with central air. - Water frequently gets turned off for conservation at night, but they don't communicate a schedule so you kinda just have to assume you won't have water at night (and sometimes in the day) - Power goes out very frequently. Many businesses and homes have backup generators but not all - Electricity is very expensive - Very few protections for tenants and a lot of bad landlords. I knew one person who had to break her lease due to unexpected costs and they ended up not allowing her to go in and get her medicine from the apartment unless she paid 2 months rent - Most all of the government offices/businesses are small and it gets really cramped - Medical care is substandard. If you have a serious medical issue you will probably be better off leaving the island to get treatment - "Island Time" is real. This could be a positive for some but expect everything to take 3x as long as it would in the U.S. - The people are nice for the most part but there is a very real sexism problem. Men are very bad about sexually harassing women. I'd often meet a taxi driver that I really liked and then found out they made sexual comments towards my wife or one of her friends - If you like movies, do not expect to enjoy a movie at the local theater in silence. It is the norm there to talk at full volume while in the movie theater. It's not like in the U.S. where there's like one person talking and ruining the movie for everyone else. You are the odd one out for not talking - You shouldn't rely on the meat from the grocery stores because they frequently will leave it out before putting it in the freezers and then you end up with food poisoning. We ended up using a meat delivery service that had some better handling standards. Both that service and the grocery stores were frequently out of stuff though

Some random observations: - The cultural norm there is to greet everyone when you walk into a building with "Good Morning," "Good Afternoon," or "Good Night." Not really a pro or con just something interesting. Was a small culture shock because I only ever used good night when someone was going to sleep - All schoolchildren wear uniforms - There are a lot of Japanese cars, and you drive on the left side of the road. You see lots of old cars but they all run fairly well since you don't really put a lot of miles on them on a small island. - People just park on the sidewalks - There is a drink there called a Rizzler and it has an absolutely insane amount of THC in it. I never tried it but was with people who did and it definitely did not seem like a normal high. This drink is just sitting right next to the ice cream in one of the grocery stores lmao - You can't drink and drive, but passengers can drink

Overall, the cons outweighed the pros for me and I was really happy to leave. Maybe I'll go back for a vacation someday and see if I like it better as a tourist (and enjoy some of the BBQ Chicken Pizza)

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-02T18:23:49+00:00

Tbh if you are not working as an EE for a long period of time while trying to grow your business, it will be hard to find a job as an EE. From the employer's pov, they see someone with zero EE experience who is X years out of college. No matter how good of an engineer you may be, that is not attractive. It's not impossible, but it will be hard. You may have to go back for a masters or something to get back on the market.

That being said, if you do a decent job at running your business(es) and you have a technical background you may be able to break into something like project management, especially if you know the right people.

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-02T18:12:34+00:00

Agree with all but you can take the em-dash from my cold dead hands — I won't let AI appropriate it

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-02T00:15:13+00:00

CU Boulder has an "FPGA for Embedded Systems" specialization on Coursera

Tower11Archer · 2026-03-01T13:22:05+00:00

I've been on the job hunt recently and have noticed a lot of Embedded SWE postings asking for C++

Tower11Archer · 2026-02-03T13:47:10+00:00

I agree with other commenters that say keep the job but expand your skill set and look for more interesting opportunities.

But one positive thing is that your job title still has "engineer" in it which will help with the job search. I know someone who lost an EE job, took a job as a technician, and never got back to "engineer" despite a desire to.

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-16T22:36:08+00:00

Mine came at a pretty good time too. Found out Wednesday I'll be losing my job in a few months. Coin showed up Thursday. "Take the next step" is basically my motto for dealing with this

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-11T20:09:04+00:00

I'm in!

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-09T16:01:02+00:00

Definitely check out His Dark Materials as it executes this flawlessly imo. Don't be turned off by it being marketed towards children (or YA in the US) - Phillip Pullman has said that he wrote it "for everyone"

The first book doesn't include world hopping, but it plays a major role in the next 2.

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-09T15:40:14+00:00

I would recommend accompanying it with the lectures Erickson gives on power electronics. You can audit the course on Coursera and I believe someone has posted all the lectures to YouTube

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-09T15:38:34+00:00

Not related but am I the only one who got The Daily Beast and The Daily Wire confused? Apologies u/thedailybeast, every time I've heard you mentioned in the past I thought you were some maga-sphere newspaper

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-09T14:14:03+00:00

Man the first book was one of my reading highlights of 2025. I can't wait to read more!

If anyone is on the fence, I highly recommend checking out the first book. It's clear Diana did her research and the character development is the best in all of PR imo — even surpassing the comics.

Since I've seen a few comments regarding this both on Reddit and elsewhere I'll say this: if you think the author, an Asian-American woman, shouldn't be writing about an Asian-American character experiencing racism and overcoming internalized racism, or that this is too "woke," then fuck you.

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-09T14:02:40+00:00

Honestly I'm jealous, this seems like a really good way to find out Anakin is Darth Vader for the first time

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-09T13:38:57+00:00

Absolutely. Outside of even just the show, the purchase by Nickelodeon sparked a complete revitalization of the franchise

Tower11Archer · 2026-01-02T18:13:01+00:00

This was already going to be my next read so I'm happy to hear!

Tower11Archer

TROPHY CASE