Embedded Software Engineer – Smart Home Connectivity

About Us:

Powerverse, established by Lightsource BP, is a leader in the growing Energy Management market. At Powerverse, we are empowering people and communities to run their lives on sustainable energy with ease. Our smart ecosystem connects to solar power, EV charging, battery storage and more, so customers can take control of costs and make energy go further in their business or home.

We are empowering a smart, connected, electric world that is convenient, economical, and clean. We make it simpler to shift to an electric world with easier buying, installation, and service journeys by taking away the option overload with our smart AI and automation at the premises. Our teams Build Products that Matter, and we value being Curious, Connected, Passionate and Reliable.

About the Role

We're looking for a hands-on Firmware Software Engineer to join our embedded systems team and help shape the connectivity layer of our smart home and energy device ecosystem. You'll be working close to the metal - writing production-grade firmware for microcontrollers, implementing and debugging wireless and wired communication protocols, and bridging device-level logic with cloud-based IoT infrastructure.

This is a role for someone who is equally comfortable reading a Modbus register map, debugging a BLE advertisement packet, and writing a clean C++ abstraction layer and who takes pride in building reliable, efficient embedded systems.

What You'll Be Working On

You'll be responsible for firmware development and protocol integration across a range of connected energy and smart home devices. Day-to-day this includes designing and implementing communication stacks for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Modbus, developing embedded application logic on ESP32 and similar MCU platforms, and contributing to the full firmware lifecycle from architecture through to production deployment. You'll collaborate closely with hardware engineers, cloud/backend developers, and QA to ensure device behaviour is correct, testable, and maintainable.

Required Skills & Experience

• Embedded C/C++ :You write clean, efficient C++ with a solid understanding of memory management in constrained environments. You're comfortable with object-oriented design patterns where appropriate and pragmatic enough to know when they're not. Experience with bare-metal and RTOS-based development (FreeRTOS or similar) is expected.
• Microcontrollers: You have hands-on production experience with ESP32 or ESP32-S/C/H series and are familiar with the ESP-IDF ecosystem. Experience with other MCU families (STM32, Nordic nRF5x, RP2040, etc.) is a plus. You understand the constraints of working with limited flash, RAM, and processing headroom.
• Wireless Protocols:  You have practical experience implementing wireless stacks on constrained devices. We highly prefer hands-on experience with Bluetooth (BLE) and Wi-Fi (provisioning, security, TCP/IP), but strongly welcome backgrounds in smart home standards like Matter or Thread. Ultimately, what matters most is your ability to navigate the realities of embedded wireless development: managing dropped connections, optimizing memory footprints, and writing robust networking code.
• Wired Protocols & Device Integration: You are comfortable interfacing with external hardware, sensors, and industrial buses. We rely heavily on Modbus (RTU over RS-485 & TCP), so experience navigating register maps is a strong advantage. However, we also highly value practical experience with standard wired interfaces like I2C and UART. Whether you are writing a Modbus driver for an inverter or an I2C driver for a real-time clock, you know how to reliably bridge hardware peripherals with your application logic.
• Linux: You're proficient working in Linux environments -writing shell scripts, cross-compiling toolchains, and managing serial/USB interfaces. You also have experience writing Python scripts for test automation, provisioning, and configuration tooling.
• Cloud IoT Fundamentals: You have a working understanding of cloud IoT connectivity patterns -MQTT, REST APIs, WebSockets, and Protobuf schemas, as well as device provisioning, certificate-based authentication, OTA update workflows, and basic integration with platforms like AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, or similar. You don't need to be a cloud engineer, but you should be able to own the device side of the stack end-to-end.
• Security: You have experience with IoT cyber-security fundamentals -including public-key cryptography, TLS authentication, secure boot, and secure coding practices.
• Version Control, Testing & Documentation You are comfortable working with Git-based version control workflows, writing unit and integration tests for firmware, and maintaining clear technical documentation to support team collaboration and code quality.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Matter or Thread protocol is a meaningful plus. Familiarity with OCPP for EV charging devices, Home Assistant integrations, or energy management system protocols would also be well regarded.
• Familiarity with Docker and Jenkins/CI-CD processes is a plus. Experience with application and tools development using TypeScript, React (Native/JS), and Python would also be quite useful.
• Comfort working with AI-assisted development tools and agentic workflows including the use of LLM-powered coding assistants (Anthropic), autonomous task execution, and prompt-driven tooling is a welcomed addition to any candidate's profile.

What We Offer

• A role with real ownership and technical depth in a growing smart energy domain
• Close collaboration with hardware, product, and platform teams
• Flexible working arrangements
• Competitive salary and benefits package

This opportunity is currently only open to candidates who are eligible to work in Ireland without needing sponsorship.