Staff Embedded Software Engineer, ESS

Location: Burlingame, CA (Onsite)

Department: ESS Engineering

Position Type: Full-time

Reports to: Senior Manager, Software Engineering

About the Company

Peak Energy is the first American venture to advance globally proven sodium-ion battery systems as the storage standard for the new era of renewable energy on a resilient grid.

Sodium-ion is cheap, readily available, and safe — making it the leading contender in a rapidly evolving market.

Our leadership team is powered by decades of expertise in scaling gigawatt-level innovation at world-class companies such as Tesla, Northvolt, Apple, Powin, Enovix, Zipline, Solid Power, SunPower, and Fluence. We are backed by strategic investment and product partners including TDK Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, and GM Ventures.

We recently announced America's first sodium-ion grid storage factory in Sacramento with production starting Q1 2027, and over $1B in signed customer commitments including Jupiter Power and Energy Vault.

About the Role

Peak Energy is looking for a DevOps Engineer to build and scale the cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and automation systems supporting our grid-scale battery storage technology.

As Peak grows from pilot deployments to gigawatt-scale production, our software infrastructure must scale alongside our products. You'll help establish the foundation that enables our engineering teams to develop, test, and deploy software efficiently and reliably.

This is a hands-on infrastructure engineering role focused on cloud services, Infrastructure as Code, database provisioning, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment automation. You'll build and maintain the systems that connect our development environments, manufacturing operations, and deployed battery systems to the cloud.

You'll work closely with software, test, and manufacturing engineering teams to improve automation, reliability, and scalability across our software infrastructure.

What You'll Do:

Design and implement real-time, C++, RTOS-based firmware targeting microcontrollers.
Understand, code, and use microcontroller hardware to meet functional safety requirements.
Create firmware for embedded prototypes to validate hardware design choices and accelerate firmware development.
Verify and support the integration of your code.
Assist with the definition of requirements.
Support products deployed to the field.
Participate in hardware and software design reviews.
Adhere to modern disciplined development practices such as Clang-based linting, consistent formatting, thoughtful naming, and clear commenting.

What You’ll Bring (Minimum Qualifications):

Extensive experience writing firmware and software code in C++ or at least one similar systems programming language
Have shipped at least one commercial or industrial hardware product.
A degree in science, engineering, or a related field.
8+ years of professional engineering experience.
Experience writing firmware for real-time embedded systems.
Experience designing complex software that coordinates several disparate functions.
Experience using Linux as a development environment and test platform.
Experience configuring build tools such as CMake/Make.
Experience with Git, GitHub, Dagger, Docker, or similar CI tools.
Eligibility to work in the United States.

Our Core Values

Speed Through Focus: Prioritize what matters most and execute quickly without distractions.

Mission Over Self: Put the company's mission and team success ahead of individual interests.

Face the Brutal Truth: Embrace honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable, to make informed decisions.

Be a Good Person: Treat everyone with respect and integrity, fostering a positive and ethical work environment.

Compensation & Benefits

The salary range for this role is $190,000 - $260,000, with actual pay varying based on work location, experience, and skills. Our competitive benefits package includes:

Flexible time off
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
Strong 401(k) plan
Equity opportunities
Many great work perks