Social Impact Project for Embedded Firmware Engineer to Support Renewable Energy in Africa

Project Description and Impact

African cities face the world’s most expensive and unreliable energy services. And these are getting progressively worse as rapid urbanization and climate change place our weak infrastructure under increasing strain. In developed countries, increasing penetration of cheap but intermittent renewable energy is upending utilities’ business models and threatening the reliability of electricity grids.

Our organization aims to address both of these issues by adding intelligence to an appliance that is already in many homes: the electric water heater. By optimizing each water heater around its homes behaviour, we can significantly reduce electricity bills. By timing when it heats based on when electricity on the grid is more abundant, we can help avoid blackouts and utilize renewable energy when it is available.

The ability to deliver Over The Air (OTA) firmware updates to our Internet of Things devices is critical to ensuring we adhere to security best practices and are positioned to enable a suite of exciting features in the future. This project will involve working closely with our team of hardware engineers to develop OTA functionality to complement our flexible custom firmware ecosystem.

Requirements:

Experience with embedded C99 development at a low level, as well as a in-depth understanding of the capabilities and limitations of microcontrollers
Experience develop OTA update functionality
Experience with Microchip PIC32 microcontrollers would be valuable
Experience with agile software development including git and kanban is a plus.