EmbeddedFirmwareFPGAControlsSCADARoboticsBESSMining AutomationMechanicalEdge AI

Embedded Systems, Firmware, FPGA, PLC and SCADA Engineering Recruitment

We place embedded, firmware, FPGA, PLC, SCADA, and BESS engineers who have shipped hardware that cannot fail. Australia, New Zealand, and the USA.

Book a 15 min Call Submit Your Job Spec

97%

Retention Rate

90d

Replacement Guarantee

28+

Years Specialist Focus

40%

Briefs We Push Back On

FIRMWARE · EMBEDDED C/C++ · FPGA / VHDL · RTOS ENGINEERING · PLC / SCADA · PLC / SCADA ENGINEERING · BESS / POWER ELECTRONICS · MINING AUTOMATION

The Problem

Hiring engineers is risky. Pretending otherwise is negligent.

Most teams discover too late that they hired for interviews, not reality. We deliberately break candidates in controlled ways before your business does it for real.

Roles rejected outright when expectations are unrealistic
97% retention because we say no more than yes
Zero tolerance for untested engineers
Used by teams where mistakes have real consequences

Call us to evaluate the risk properly.

Book a Call

Overview

What we do

RunTime helps engineering teams avoid bad hires in complex, real world systems.

We Understand Engineering

We don't skim resumes. We interrogate competence. Our screening is grounded in how systems actually fail.

No Template Hiring

There are no interchangeable engineers. We align to your system, your risk profile, and your delivery pressure.

Signal Over Volume

We don't flood you with CVs. We apply targeted outreach, referrals, and a curated database.

We Own the Risk With You

We challenge job specs, pressure test candidates, and manage interviews with intent.

Active Roles

Open Positions

View All

Senior Mechanical/SMP Designer

Job Location: Melbourne, Victoria

View Full Job >>

Control Systems Engineer

Job Location: Perth, Western Australia

View Full Job >>

Mechanical Engineer - Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth

Job Location: Melbourne, Victoria

2-5 Years Exp Mechanical Engineer

View Full Job >>

Electrical Engineer - URD/VESI

Job Location: Melbourne, Victoria

View Full Job >>

RF & Electronics Engineer

Job Location: Adelaide, South Australia

View Full Job >>

Senior Process Development Engineer

Job Location: Sydney, New South Wales

View Full Job >>

Sectors We Cover

Industries

See All

Medical

Transport

Industrial

Audio/Video

Space

ML/CV

Agriculture

Energy

Telecommunications

IoT

How It Works

Workflow

Phase	What Happens	Why It Matters
Kick off	Stakeholder briefing. Lock down job spec. Agree KPIs, timelines, and contacts.	Aligns everyone on goals and process, prevents scope creep later.
Market Research	Analyse competitors and tech stacks. Map market trends.	Sharpens the pitch so we attract exactly the right talent.
Candidate Sourcing	Search databases and inbound lists. Leverage networks, social channels, and referrals.	Builds a quality funnel with no resume blasts.
Shortlisting	Technical interviews. Skills tests.	Saves you time, only the top three candidates move forward.
Presentation and Interviews	Present endorsed candidates. Schedule interviews. Debrief both sides after each round.	Maintains momentum and candidate engagement throughout.
Offer Management	Reference checks. Draft and present offer. Confirm commitment level.	Reduces last minute surprises and renegotiations.
Post Hire Support	Regular check ins with client and new hire. Assist onboarding.	Protects your investment and boosts retention.

Social Proof

What Engineers and Clients Say

RunTime Recruitment

57 Google reviews

Write a Review

Payam Samavati

July 28, 2025

Had a great experience with Runtime. A big thank you to Aldwin, who was incredibly helpful, professional, and supportive throughout the whole process. Highly recommend!

Peter Tan

June 29, 2025

Lance proactively secured my opportunity and made the hiring process smooth with his professionalism, clear communication, and genuine support throughout. Highly recommend RunTime Recruitment.

Davey Tober

February 14, 2025

I had a great experience working with both Simon and Lance at Runtime. They were responsive, diligent, and took the time to truly understand my background and career goals.

Michael Chen

January 10, 2025

RunTime found me a senior firmware role in two weeks. Lance understood exactly what I was looking for technically and only sent me roles that were a genuine fit. No keyword matching nonsense.

Sarah Williams

December 5, 2024

As a hiring manager, RunTime saved us months of failed searching. They pushed back on our unrealistic spec and helped us define what we actually needed. Every candidate they sent was worth interviewing.

James Robertson

November 18, 2024

Best technical recruiter I have worked with. They actually understand embedded systems and asked me real engineering questions during screening. The role they placed me in was exactly right.

Engineering Insights

Latest Articles

View All Articles

Technical15 September 2026

Autonomous Failure Mitigation: Deploying Micro-Agents for Unsupervised Embedded System Recovery

In simple microcontrollers, this “reboot-and-pray” approach was acceptable. Modern edge deployments — spanning autonomous automotive ADAS platforms, remote satellites, medical implants, and industrial IoT gateways — cannot afford brute-force restarts. A full system reboot introduces multi-second execution blackouts, drops critical network sessions, discards real-time sensor buffers, and risks locking devices into unrecoverable bootloops if corruption persists across flash memory. To achieve high availability in mission-critical edge devices, firmware architects are transitioning from reactive resets to Autonomous Failure Mitigation. By deploying lightweight, isolated Micro-Agents into the firmware architecture, embedded systems can monitor runtime integrity, isolate corrupt memory spaces, execute localized thread recycling, and perform surgical state recovery — all without interrupting the broader application or dropping hardware peripherals.

Algorithmic Power Attribution: Profiling Energy Consumption Across Individual Multi-Core MCU Tasks

Multi-core microcontrollers (MCUs) — such as dual-core ARM Cortex-M33 architectures, asymmetric Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M0+ pairings, and multi-core RISC-V devices — have fundamentally reshaped modern embedded systems design. By decoupling real-time control loops from heavy mathematical compute, digital signal processing, or wireless protocol stacks, these multi-core silicon designs allow firmware developers to maximize execution throughput while scaling down dynamic operating frequency. However, this architectural leap introduces a major engineering hurdle: traditional energy profiling methods completely fall apart in multi-core environments. Consequently, macro-level energy measurements mask localized software inefficiencies. An energy-hungry spin-lock, an improperly duty-cycled hardware timer, an inefficient polling loop, or a cache-thrashing thread can easily hide within the baseline power footprint of an active secondary core. To achieve true energy optimization in modern firmware, engineering teams must move beyond global current measurement and adopt Algorithmic Power Attribution: the systematic decomposition of physical system current into discrete, task-level energy profiles across multiple concurrent processing cores.

Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP): Managing Inter-Processor Communication Without Latency Spikes

When an application core and a real-time core must exchange telemetry, control commands, or high-throughput sensor streams, naive IPC implementations frequently introduce unpredictable latency spikes. A single unexpected 50-microsecond delay in message delivery can cause missed deadline constraints, dropped audio frames, or catastrophic control loop instability in motor drives. Achieving sub-microsecond, zero-jitter IPC performance across an AMP boundary requires a deep, hardware-aware understanding of shared memory structures, cache coherence protocols, interrupt handling overhead, and software framework optimizations.

You keep applying. You keep getting silence.

28 years reading firmware CVs. A $27 PDF guide that shows you exactly why most firmware CVs get closed in 8 seconds and how to fix yours today.

Get the Guide . $27

$27

Instant PDF download

Market Intelligence

Engineering Market Pulse

Real embedded engineering job market data across Australia and the USA. Skills in demand, hiring by discipline, and location trends — updated twice monthly.

View Market Pulse

2,992

US Firmware Jobs

5,937

US Robotics Jobs

144

AU Robotics Jobs

AU Firmware Jobs

Free Newsletter

The Engineering Pulse

Engineering recruitment insights, embedded systems trends, and career intelligence. No spam. No recruiterspeak.

Common Questions

FAQ

We specialise exclusively in deep tech hardware disciplines: embedded systems engineers, firmware engineers, FPGA engineers, DSP engineers, robotics engineers, control systems engineers, PLC and SCADA engineers, power electronics and BESS engineers, mining automation engineers, mechanical engineers, machine learning and edge AI engineers, hardware engineers, and electronics engineers. We do not place generalist software developers or IT professionals.