Principal Systems Engineer

Salary Range: 225000 to 275000 (Currency: USD) (Pay period: per-year-salary)

Why Join Afero? The next wave of AI lives in everyday devices. Help build it.

Our vision is to make all the world's devices secure and AI-powered, through innovation and scale. Come build the products used by millions of people every day.

Afero is the IoT platform as a service trusted by manufacturers and brands to make connected devices both smart and secure. Today, Afero technology powers more than 20 million devices across 200+ products from 50+ manufacturers. Afero has more than 130 patents, one of the largest IoT patent portfolios globally, and was named a 2024 IoT Breakthrough Winner for IoT Security Platform of the Year. Afero is driven by a team of world-class executives and veterans in mobile, hardware, security, consumer and cloud, leveraging experience from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, Roku and Danger.

Microcontrollers, the low-cost, low-power chips inside plugs, bulbs, locks, sensors, thermostats, and meters, ship at a rate of more than 4 billion a year, more than phones, laptops, and servers combined. Yet they lack a common software layer for identity, connectivity, provisioning, updates, fleet management, and enterprise-grade security. Afero delivers that layer: a unified platform, tested at scale in The Home Depot's Hubspace smart home ecosystem, for devices that cannot run a general-purpose operating system like Linux or Android. These devices form the far edge, connecting the physical and digital worlds so modern AI can meet people where they are. 

To learn more, please visit www.afero.io.

What We’re Looking For

As a Principal Systems Engineer, you own how the pieces fit together. You'll define and review device protocols, debug problems that cross firmware, app and cloud boundaries, and be the technical point of contact for manufacturers and partners bringing new products onto Hubspace. You'll work closely with firmware, mobile, platform and product teams, and you'll often be the person who turns a vague integration problem into a clear spec. 

Key Responsibilities

Device integration and protocols

Define, review and correct device-level protocols (UART, BLE, SPI) between supplier MCUs and the Hubspace Module.

Map device capabilities to Afero's attribute and data models, and keep specs accurate as products evolve.

Lead bring-up and debug of new devices with manufacturers, from first prototype through production.

Assess supplier-proposed designs and changes on technical merit, and flag scope impacts to product owners early.

Device-to-cloud systems

Trace and resolve issues that span firmware, the Hubspace mobile app and cloud services.

Contribute to architecture for multi-protocol products such as gateways and bridges (BLE, proprietary RF, Matter).

Work with platform engineers on GCP-hosted services, data flows and cost/performance trade-offs (e.g., BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Cloud SQL).

Improve factory and provisioning workflows so new devices onboard reliably at production scale.

Partner and cross-team enablement

Serve as technical liaison to manufacturers, retail and platform partners, and voice-assistant ecosystems.

Write clear technical documents: protocol specs, integration guides, design reviews and decision memos.

Translate deep technical detail into concise recommendations for product and executive stakeholders.

Support Partner Enablement tickets and mentor other engineers on systems thinking and debugging.

Required Qualifications

7+ years in systems, embedded or IoT engineering, with real products shipped at volume.

Clear, precise technical writing, and the ability to explain trade-offs to non-engineers.

Experience working directly with contract manufacturers or external hardware partners.

Hands-on experience with serial and wireless protocols (UART, SPI, I2C, BLE) and reading/writing protocol specs.

Understanding of IoT cloud patterns: MQTT, REST APIs, device provisioning and OTA updates.

Ability to debug across layers—device, mobile app and cloud—and isolate root cause quickly.

BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science or equivalent experience.

Nice to Have

Working knowledge of embedded C on common MCUs (e.g., Nordic nRF52, ESP32, STM32) and comfort with logic analyzers, sniffers and debuggers.

Matter, Thread or Zigbee experience, including bridges or border routers.

Familiarity with smart home ecosystems and voice-assistant integrations.

Experience with GCP (BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Cloud SQL) or similar cloud data platforms.

Background in consumer electronics certification or retail product launches.

Experience with HVAC, lighting, locks or other connected home device categories.

Scripting in Python or similar for test tools, log analysis and automation.