Embedded System Engineer

Good Friday Robotics builds drones and other robotics for hazardous and confined environments: places people shouldn't have to go. Our systems operate in sewers, tunnels and marine environments, combining custom robotics hardware with LiDAR, vision and networked sensing.

We are a small, engineering-led company. The person who designs a board here also sees it run in a real tunnel. We hold a no-weapons, no-military policy: everything we build exists to keep people out of dangerous places.

This is a full-time, open-ended position based at our prototyping facility in Benfica, Lisbon, with occasional travel to survey sites in the UK and Ireland.

The Role

You will join our engineering team to design, build and bring up the electronics inside our platforms. PCB fabrication and assembly are outsourced; prototyping, rework and bring-up happen in our workshop.

You'll work with the rest of the team to design modules within a wider system (power distribution, network topology, connectors and enclosures).

Responsibilities

• Schematic capture and multilayer PCB layout of embedded modules, including high-speed digital routing (Ethernet switch, PHYs, MCU)
• Power electronics design: constant-current LED drivers, Li-ion battery management and protection
• Design-for-manufacture: stackup, panelisation, assembly documentation and engineering queries with our fabricators
• Embedded firmware in C for STM32-class MCUs (bare-metal or RTOS), including device drivers and network telemetry
• Board bring-up: JTAG/SWD debugging, oscilloscope and logic analyser work, structured test firmware
• Maintaining design files in our repositories under revision control

Requirements

• 2+ years of hands-on embedded electronics experience, with at least one board taken from schematic through layout to a working prototype or product
• Multilayer PCB layout, with exposure to high-speed digital routing (Ethernet or similar)
• Grounding in power electronics: DC-DC conversion, LED driving, or battery/BMS work
• Solid embedded C on ARM Cortex-M (STM32 preferred)
• Board bring-up and debug with standard lab instrumentation
• Working fluency in KiCad or Altium
• Comfortable taking a defined brief and running with it, asking the right questions along the way
• Fluent English (Portuguese is a plus)
• Eligible to work in Portugal

Nice to Have

• RF/wireless awareness: antenna placement, Wi-Fi 6, link budgets in enclosed spaces
• EMC awareness and design mitigation
• ATEX / intrinsically-safe design exposure (component selection, potting, thermal)
• Embedded Linux exposure (device trees, vendor BSPs; Microchip/NXP a plus)
• TSN / gPTP or time-sensitive Ethernet
• Harsh-environment or IP-rated electronics; robotics or drones
• Familiarity with battery safety standards (IEC 62133 or similar)

What You Get

• Real responsibility on real hardware: boards you design end up in tunnels and sewers, not slide decks
• A small team where you learn fast, with direct design review rather than layers of process
• Room to grow as our hardware line expands
• 22+ days' holiday, meal allowance, transport benefit, equipment budget, and resources to acquire new skills