Lead Firmware Engineer

About Brompton

We make bikes that move differently. Every fold, every ride, every detail matters. At Brompton, engineering and craft meet freedom of expression. Each bike invites you to explore your city, your routine, and yourself in new ways.

We don’t just make bikes. We shape possibilities. Over fifty years of innovation flow through every frame, and every team member helps shape what comes next. We are looking for a Lead Firmware Engineer to help us keep moving differently.

About The Role

The Lead Firmware Engineer is a hands-on role, who is accountable for the technical direction and delivery of embedded software across Brompton's Electric product line. Reporting into the Head of Electric Systems, you will own the firmware roadmap from prototype through to production, lead a team of firmware engineers, and serve as the primary technical interface between firmware, hardware, and product teams.

Key responsibilities

Technical leadership and architecture

• Own the firmware architecture for Brompton's in-house electric drive system, including motor control algorithms, sensor signal processing, and low-level drivers.
• Set and enforce coding standards, review practices, and long-term platform strategy.
• Drive architecture decisions in collaboration with hardware and systems engineering, ensuring firmware is scalable, maintainable, and safe.
• Lead bring-up, debugging, and validation of new controller hardware, acting as the senior technical escalation point for complex real-time, timing, and signal integrity issues.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted software development tools

Team and people management

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of firmware engineers, conducting regular 1:1s and supporting career growth.
• Allocate work across the team, balancing delivery priorities with technical debt and skill development.
• Release planning and cross-team collaboration
• Own the firmware release roadmap, coordinating with hardware, product, and manufacturing teams to align on milestones and dependencies.
• Plan and manage firmware release cycles.
• Represent firmware in cross-functional planning sessions and design reviews, translating technical constraints into clear communication for non-engineering stakeholders.

What You'll Bring

• An experienced embedded software engineer ready to step into — or already operating in — a lead capacity, with a track record of shipping firmware on real products.
• Comfortable setting technical direction and rolling up your sleeves when the team needs it.
• Ideally experienced in safety critical applications
• A clear communicator who can represent engineering to product, hardware, and leadership stakeholders.
• Experienced leading or mentoring engineers, with an understanding of how to grow a team's capability over time.
• Proficient in C and C++, with hands-on experience across the full SDLC (requirements, design, implementation, testing).

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Experienced with embedded communication protocols

CAN, BLE, I²C, UART, SPI.

• Ideally experienced in working with mathworks toolsets
• Familiar with CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, Docker) and version control (Git).

Benefits at Brompton

9 Day Fortnight – This is a flexible working pattern which individuals can opt in for where an employee works their contractual hours across 9 days instead of 10 days. (i.e. 80 hours across 9 days instead of 10 days). This mean the individual would work an additional hour across Monday to Thursday to gain their Friday off

Annual Leave – 25 days annual leave, plus all UK bank holidays, prorated

Competitive Salary – Plus workplace pension scheme and profit share bonus.

Brompton Discount - Get ready to bike in style, as all employee’s receive up to 60% off their very own bike and accessories, plus there are discounts for your friends and family too.

Staff Loan Bike – All employees are eligible to receive a Brompton Bicycle which they can use free of charge for up to 3 months

Free Breakfast – Unlimited, all-day access to an array of fruit and cereal

Breakout Areas – Unwind on the mezzanine floor which contains a ping-pong, foosball and pool table and other games like darts and a giant Connect-4!

Learning and Development - Access to free LinkedIn Learning and opportunity to devote some of your time at work to personal development. We value professional development and actively promote internal promotions and opportunities.

Benefits - Workplace Pension Scheme, Flexible Working, Cycle to Work Scheme and other benefits.

Mental Health – We provide access to a confidential EAP that offers counselling, resources and support for various mental health challenges.

Paid Leave – We offer an enhanced Family, Paternity and Maternity leave pay.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Commitment

Regardless of age, disability, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, culture, educational background, parental status, neurodiversity or disability - whoever you are, if you’re passionate about your work, curious, relentless and customer-obsessed, we want to hear from you.