Lead, Firmware Engineer
Job Description
About Us
We're Queue, the world's first fully autonomous robotic pharmacy. We go from sealed wholesale bottles to filled, verified prescription vials with zero human involvement.
We built Queue because no one should ever have to wait in line for the medicines they need. One in three US pharmacies has shut down. Pharmacists are overworked to a breaking point. And patients are paying the price. Queue fixes that. Pharmacists get to practice pharmacy again — counseling patients, catching interactions, doing the work only they can do. And patients get their prescriptions in 60 seconds or less, any time, anywhere.
We're backed by over $18 million from Alleycorp, Riot Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, House Capital, and others who believe the pharmacy system is broken and that robotics can fix it. Queue was founded by Nick Desai (6x founder, previously CEO of Heal) and Joshua Liu (previously Tesla, Waymo, and Zipline).
We build physical robots that handle Schedule II narcotics. Patient safety is non-negotiable, and it starts in the firmware.
About the Role
You lead the firmware — hands-on — and you build the team that owns it. This is a Lead role, which at Queue means one specific thing: you carry the same technical bar as a Staff engineer (you still design, prototype, and debug the hard subsystems yourself), and you own the delivery of your people — you mentor, you hire, you set the loop, and you're accountable for what the firmware team ships, not just your own commits.
You own the firmware that physically moves the medication: the bare-metal / RTOS software on the motor-control microcontroller, the PreScript interface to the edge agent, the safety interlocks, and the sensor cross-checks that make an unsafe dispense structurally impossible. And you own the team that builds it as we scale from 5 robots to the field — recruiting, growing engineers, defining how firmware gets built and reviewed, and running the interview loop for your own hires.
You report to the Head of Software Engineering, work directly with the CTO on the motor-control and hardware interface, and partner with the edge and hardware teams on the interfaces between them.
What You'll Own
The firmware (hands-on — the Staff technical bar):
Motor control, the PreScript firmware interface, sensor acquisition and cross-check, on-firmware safety state machines, and firmware observability — you still design and debug the hard parts yourself, and you set the standard for all of it.
The team (the Lead layer):
Delivery through people — You're accountable for the firmware team's output: the roadmap, the estimates, the trade-offs, the ship. When the team delivers, that's the job; when it slips, that's yours to unblock.
Growing engineers — You mentor, you sponsor, you hand off responsibility as the team grows, and you develop people toward Senior and Staff. You lead by example and aren't above rolling up your sleeves.
Hiring & the loop — You define and run the firmware interview loop, calibrate the rubric, and make the hiring call. Everyone contributes to hiring; a Lead owns the loop.
Performance & standards — You run performance conversations honestly and set the quality bar the team is held to.
Cross-team interfaces — You own the firmware team's contracts with edge, hardware/CTO, and the broader software org, and communicate clearly across all of them.
How the Lead level is assessed — three things, and you can't trade one away: (1) communication — you make complex firmware legible to the CTO, the edge team, and non-firmware stakeholders, and write decisions down; (2) the delivery of your people — your team ships safe, correct firmware and grows while doing it; (3) technical implementation & quality — non-negotiable; you remain a hands-on engineer who sets the bar, not a manager-from-afar.
First 90 Days
Day 30: Deep on the motor-control firmware and the team. First hands-on PR to a hard subsystem. Paired with the CTO on the hardware interface. A read on where the team is strong, where it's stretched, and what to hire for.
Day 60: Owning the firmware roadmap and the team's delivery. Firmware interview loop defined and running for your open reqs. Mentoring cadence established. A subsystem hardened under your standard.
Day 90: A full dispense driven through firmware you're accountable for, on real hardware, with the safety interlocks proven under fault. The team is delivering to a bar you set, at least one hire is in the loop, and the firmware quality standard is written down and enforced.
What We're Looking For
Must-Have
8–12+ years firmware / embedded, with time in senior, staff, or lead IC roles — and real experience scaling a team and delivering through others.
Staff-level firmware depth — bare-metal / RTOS in C and/or Rust, motor/motion control, ARM Cortex-M, safety-critical systems. You still ship the hard subsystems yourself.
People leadership — you've mentored engineers, hired and run interview loops, and been accountable for a team's delivery. You've had the hard performance conversations.
Communication — you make firmware legible to executives and adjacent teams and write decisions down for others to audit.
Nice-to-Have
Ground-up builder: products you've taken from concept to production release.
Power electronics / gate drivers; Jetson / embedded Linux adjacency; robotics.
Healthcare or other regulated / audited industry experience.
How We Hire
Recruiter Screen (30 min)
Technical Interview (90 min) — a take-home walkthrough plus a live design exercise; we fix and improve together.
Design Interview (60 min) — a control/observability subsystem deep-dive.
Leadership Interview (60 min) — weighted toward team-building, delivery-through-people, and how you'd run and grow this team.
The technical bar is the Staff bar; the Leadership stage carries the Lead distinction.
What We Offer
Early-stage equity in automated pharmacy dispensing at scale
A rare seat: build and lead the firmware team from 5 robots to the field
Direct impact — your team's firmware physically, safely moves medication for real patients
Small team, zero bureaucracy, high trust; work directly with a CTO with deep robotics / autonomous-systems background
Compensation & Benefits
Competitive salary
Meaningful early-stage equity
Health, 401(k), unlimited PTO
Why Join Us Now?
Impact & Growth
Direct Patient Impact: Your team's firmware will improve healthcare outcomes for millions of patients
Market Leadership: Ground-floor opportunity to define an entirely new category of healthcare technology
Technical Innovation: Genuinely novel problems at the intersection of AI, robotics, and healthcare
Career Acceleration: Build and lead a team from the ground floor as the company scales
Team and Culture
World-Class Team: Work alongside exceptional engineers, AI researchers, and healthcare experts
Direct Access: Work directly with the CTO on the hardware interface, with real autonomy and influence
Innovation Focus: Culture that prioritizes breakthrough thinking and rapid experimentation
Mission-Driven: United around transforming healthcare through technology
Our Values
Servant Leadership: Make those around you better. We serve our teams the way Queue serves communities: 4,000 pharmacies close each year and deserts are spreading - we’re here to reverse that.
Do the Hard Things: Healthcare, hardware, and company-building are all hard. We do them anyway. Convenience for us is life-changing for those we serve.
Own Your Work: Be accountable; take pride in what you ship. Queue lives and dies by what you do - own it fully.
Default is Now: There’s never a better time than today. Default to action: what can we prove, learn, or simplify right now?
Contact: If you have any questions, please contact us at careers@queue.inc
