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.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
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.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in embedded systems companies. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
The firmware lead or board designer holds undocumented knowledge of drivers and revisions. If that person resigns mid-project, the customer's release date is in danger.
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.
Technicians who debug with a logic analyser and a soldering station are graded under coders, though the project stalls without their fixes.
A specification change after layout sends hardware and firmware back into joint rework, and nobody owns the engineer-days it burns.
A fresh engineer needs a long stretch to read the codebase and learn lab habits, while the mentoring senior loses their own project hours.
Bigger firms offer a fixed product role and a known brand, so your best people set it against the churn of customer projects.
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.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
How many people, in which roles, by when, and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes, one for complaints, one for conduct, kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a embedded systems companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
List each firmware module, board revision and test script with an owner and a named backup.
List 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.
Place bring-up technicians, test engineers and firmware developers on a single scale by what each can do unaided, and attach pay to it.
Place 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.
The designer explains schematic choices and code structure to a second engineer, who writes the gaps down.
The 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.
Start with a small real fix, move to a bring-up shift beside a senior, then give a whole module, signing off each stage.
Start 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.
Map the skills each coming project needs, such as CAN stacks or low-power analogue, and open searches before the gap appears.
Map 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.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
Share your requirementsConfirm 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.
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.
Holds on to the few engineers who carry your designs, with reasons to stay that go beyond the current project.
A staged route that takes a graduate from reading code to owning a driver or module.
Grades that put bench technicians and firmware developers on a fair footing against nearby firms.
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.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator can struggle as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
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.
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Tell us your industry, team size and the issue you want to address. Bring one example of where work gets delayed or ownership is unclear, and the deadline or decision you are working towards.
