Embedded Engineering Manager

About the Role

WHOOP is hiring an Embedded Engineering Manager to build and lead a new embedded team for a next-generation wearable. The team owns the firmware that members interact with directly on the device, taking it from early prototypes through new product introduction and into production.

This role combines technical leadership with people management. You will lead a team of full-time and contract firmware engineers, participate in architecture decisions with technical leads, review code, and own the delivery schedule.

Responsibilities

• Build, manage, and mentor a team of embedded engineers through hiring, onboarding, feedback, performance management, and career development.
• Direct the work of contract engineers alongside full-time staff, holding both to the same design and code quality bar.
• Lead the team's delivery of the member's on-device experience firmware, from prototype through production release.
• Partner with the program's technical lead and senior engineers on architecture for responsive, power-efficient firmware on resource-constrained multi-core hardware.
• Serve as a player-coach who reviews code and shapes designs, contributing directly when the team needs it.
• Own the team's planning and delivery cadence, keeping scope, dependencies, and risk visible to partners and leadership.
• Partner with Product and Design to turn member experience goals into firmware requirements that fit the hardware's memory, compute, and power budgets.
• Set engineering practices for testing, hardware-in-the-loop validation, release readiness, and field diagnostics.
• Foster a culture of high standards, direct feedback, accountability, psychological safety, and continuous learning.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of embedded firmware development in C or C++, including experience as an engineering manager or team lead responsible for mentorship, feedback, and career development.
• Experience shipping firmware in a consumer electronics product, from early hardware bring-up through production.
• Hands-on experience with an RTOS (Zephyr, FreeRTOS, or similar) on microcontrollers or embedded SoCs.
• Experience optimizing firmware for performance, memory, and power on constrained hardware.
• Demonstrated ability to plan and deliver in ambiguous environments, including early-stage hardware programs where requirements are still forming.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs to Product, Design, and leadership.
• Strong commitment to embracing and leveraging AI tools in day-to-day tasks, ensuring AI-assisted work meets the same quality bar as personal contributions.