The location: We're fully remote, so this is flexible, but there are two of us in Dunedin (following a third's retirement this month) and it's been helpful to occasionally meet in person to sync, exchange prototypes, share tools, etc. Happy to consider applicants elsewhere in NZ. Further afield might be possible for a stellar applicant, however we do need some overlap in working hours.
The people: I've been at this company for 7 years now, and have to say that's largely because my colleagues, and specifically my manager, are good folks to work with. Admittedly, there is a lot about our technology/company culture/process that is a bit old-school and at times that can be frustrating (this is telecom), but our little hardware group is pragmatic, helpful, kind, and just generally humane. We're a fairly eclectic bunch, with quite a lot of cumulative experience, which can lead to interesting and fun conversations now and then. Relative to other places I've worked, this outfit is pretty low on process and bureaucracy, which is usually good (I've been able to take a couple long breaks to go backpacking and sailing) but can be less-good sometimes (a couple specific personalities in other groups can occasionally make things difficult) - being self directed is an asset.
The work: Firmware and embedded Linux software (plus the usual array of tooling, documentation, testing, manufacturing) for VoIP systems. We are the software contingent of a hardware group which has ~12 people total, mostly in California. There is a separate software group that deals with the higher layers of the company's offerings, managed from California but operating there and overseas. Offhand, we support about a dozen products/projects, so the job description for the new firmware person is pretty vague, but it's mainly maintenance and some modernisation of existing C and C++11 (though, mostly C-like C++) codebases. I'm convinced that Rust (or something very much like it) is the way forward, so familiarity with Rust would be a big plus, and we do have a small but growing amount of it in use. There's some scope for getting out of the pure firmware realm as well; for instance I've done a bit of electronics for tooling and test automation, and set up much of our CI infrastructure. There's still loads to do on the testing front, in particular.
The tools: As above, most of what we do is C and C++, some of the C firmwares are built with a rather old version of the ARM commercial compiler, other C and all C++ goes through gcc. Currently, we've got two embedded Linux systems with the older one using OpenWRT and the newer one Buildroot, effectively everything is built using `make`, one way or another. Jira for issue tracking and limited project management, Confluence for documentation, GitLab for Git hosting and CI, Docker containers are popping up here and there. As we're contractors, there's total flexibility in terms of OS/editor/Git client/etc (there are minimal requirements from IT, of course) - the two of us in Dunedin have used various mixes of MacOS and Linux so far, but the hardware engineers run Windows and I imagine a suitably keen firmware person could make that work.
The compensation: This will be negotiated with my manager, but I'd say competitive in a NZ context and of course it'll depend on experience - please do let me know your expectations.
If you're keen, send me a PM on here, or ian@no8wireless.nz .
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