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Electronics and Embedded Systems · Embedded Systems Companies
HR for Embedded Systems Companies: Firmware, Hardware Design and Prototype Labs
An embedded systems company writes the firmware and designs the boards that run inside other firms' meters, vehicles and machines. A handful of engineers carry each design in memory, which is the real exposure.
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Share your requirementsAn embedded systems company builds microcontroller boards and firmware for customers who fit them into energy meters, vehicle units, medical devices or appliances. A job starts with a customer requirements document, then moves to schematic capture, PCB layout, driver and RTOS code, bring-up on the lab bench, environmental testing and a pilot lot. Some firms also run a small SMT line for the first few hundred units. Teams are tiny. One firmware lead may know every driver, and one designer may know why board revision C differs from B. Release dates are fixed by the customer, so the final fortnight runs late. Larger product firms keep calling your best people. Parent guide: HR for manufacturing.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in embedded systems companies, you may see
- The whole design sits in one head
- Bring-up eats evenings with no fixed hours
- Bench skill is valued below desk skill
- Late customer changes cascade
- New graduates take months to become useful
- Product companies poach mid-level engineers
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in embedded systems companies
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
- Firmware and RTOS engineers
- Analogue and digital hardware designers
- PCB layout designers
- Test and validation engineers
- Lab bring-up technicians
- SMT and prototype assembly staff
- Programme managers
- Field application engineers
Where HR strains in embedded systems companies
The whole design sits in one head
The firmware lead or board designer often holds undocumented knowledge of drivers and revisions. If that person resigns mid-project, the customer's release date is in danger.
Bring-up eats evenings with no fixed hours
A board that will not boot or a sensor that drifts keeps engineers at the scope until late, and that effort rarely shows up when ratings are given.
Bench skill is valued below desk skill
Technicians who debug with a logic analyser and a soldering station are graded under coders, though the project stalls without their fixes.
Late customer changes cascade
A specification change after layout sends hardware and firmware back into joint rework, and nobody owns the engineer-days it burns.
New graduates take months to become useful
A fresh engineer needs a long stretch to read the codebase and learn lab habits, while the mentoring senior loses their own project hours.
Product companies poach mid-level engineers
Bigger firms offer a fixed product role and a known brand, so your best people set it against the churn of customer projects.
HR topics for embedded systems companies
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; Learning and Development; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a embedded systems companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Keep an ownership sheet for modules and boards
List each firmware module, board revision and test script with an owner and a named backup.
What this coversHide
Keep an ownership sheet for modules and boards
List each firmware module, board revision and test script with an owner and a named backup.
What this coversHideList each firmware module, board revision and test script with an owner and a named backup. Hold it in employee information management so it stays current.
Use one grade scale for bench and desk
Place bring-up technicians, test engineers and firmware developers on a single scale by what each can do unaided, and attach pay to it.
What this coversHide
Use one grade scale for bench and desk
Place bring-up technicians, test engineers and firmware developers on a single scale by what each can do unaided, and attach pay to it.
What this coversHidePlace bring-up technicians, test engineers and firmware developers on a single scale by what each can do unaided, and attach pay to it. See compensation benchmarking.
Hold a design walkthrough before each pilot lot
The designer explains schematic choices and code structure to a second engineer, who writes the gaps down.
What this coversHide
Hold a design walkthrough before each pilot lot
The designer explains schematic choices and code structure to a second engineer, who writes the gaps down.
What this coversHideThe designer explains schematic choices and code structure to a second engineer, who writes the gaps down. Nothing important then lives in only one person's memory.
Stage the first project for new engineers
Start with a small real fix, move to a bring-up shift beside a senior, then give a whole module, signing off each stage.
What this coversHide
Stage the first project for new engineers
Start with a small real fix, move to a bring-up shift beside a senior, then give a whole module, signing off each stage.
What this coversHideStart with a small real fix, move to a bring-up shift beside a senior, then give a whole module, signing off each stage. A staged learning plan holds it together.
Plan hiring against the project calendar
Map the skills each coming project needs, such as CAN stacks or low-power analogue, and open searches before the gap appears.
What this coversHide
Plan hiring against the project calendar
Map the skills each coming project needs, such as CAN stacks or low-power analogue, and open searches before the gap appears.
What this coversHideMap the skills each coming project needs, such as CAN stacks or low-power analogue, and open searches before the gap appears. Recruitment process consulting supports this.
Start by checking where you stand
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirements- List the boards and firmware modules that only one engineer can explain.
- Ask your firmware lead who would take over if they left next month.
- Count the late evenings the last release team put in beyond normal hours.
- Time how long your last three hires took to ship their first unaided piece of work.
- Note the bench technicians graded below engineers even though they unblock releases.
- Confirm with a qualified professional the registration, record-keeping and employment obligations that apply to your embedded design and prototype business.
Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
How GullyHR helps
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
- Retention and attrition management
Holds on to the few engineers who carry your designs, with reasons to stay that go beyond the current project.
- Learning and development process
A staged route that takes a graduate from reading code to owning a driver or module.
- Compensation benchmarking
Grades that put bench technicians and firmware developers on a fair footing against nearby firms.
- Role design and job descriptions
Clear remits for hardware, firmware and test, so ownership is decided on paper and not by habit.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Management
How to recognise and address employee workload problems
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead article
HR Process
The training calendar nobody attends: fixing the learning and development process
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead article
HR Management
Salary bands for SMEs: building grades when you have never had any
Most salary structures grew one negotiation at a time. How to build grades and bands from what you already pay, without repricing everybody at once.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Ask for a module ownership sheet, pair every module with a backup and make a design walkthrough part of each release. Credit the mentor's time when you rate their work.
Log the hours and the fault solved, then bring both into rating discussions. Otherwise people who stay late chasing a stubborn board look the same as everyone else.
They can share one scale with separate tracks. The point is that debugging and test skills are written down and paid for, so technicians can see the next step up.
Agree a change procedure with the customer that records what each change costs in engineer-days. It protects the team and gives real figures for your next quotation.
Be plain about what you offer: wider ownership, quicker decisions and design from schematic to shipment. Show the grade path and keep your interview rounds short.
We would ask which boards and modules only one person understands, how many extra evenings the last release took, and how long new engineers needed before working alone. An ownership sheet plus a bench-and-desk grade scale makes a sensible first job. The scope would then be set down in writing after we talk.
More on HR for manufacturing
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