The hiring landscape for embedded systems engineers is a battlefield. As a hiring manager, you’re on the front lines, tasked with finding the rarest of technical talent—individuals who can bridge the gap between hardware and software, navigate the intricacies of real-time operating systems, and write highly optimized code that fits within the tight constraints of a microcontroller. Your success hinges on securing the right person for the job, but often, your mission is compromised by an unexpected adversary: your own Human Resources department.
HR, in its well-intentioned but often misguided efforts, can impose requirements that are a complete disconnect from the realities of embedded systems development. They might demand a “rockstar ninja coder with 10+ years of C++ experience on bare-metal systems, an expertise in AI/ML, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering,” all for a mid-level role with a modest salary. This isn’t just a minor inconvenience; it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the embedded engineering discipline that leads to a cascade of negative outcomes: a talent pool of zero, a prolonged hiring cycle, and ultimately, a missed opportunity to build a high-performing team.
This guide is for you, the embedded hiring manager. It’s a battle plan for pushing back on unrealistic requirements from HR, grounded in data, logic, and a deep understanding of what it actually takes to be an embedded engineer. We’ll explore common HR pitfalls, provide you with the tools to debunk them, and equip you with a strategy to build a collaborative, rather than adversarial, relationship with your HR partners.
The Problem: A Tale of Two Realities
The core of the issue lies in a fundamental asymmetry of information. HR professionals are experts in talent acquisition, compensation, and legal compliance. They’re trained to see hiring in terms of keywords, years of experience, and standardized job descriptions. This is a great model for many roles—think marketing, sales, or even general software development. But it falls apart when applied to the highly specialized, multidisciplinary field of embedded systems.
Embedded systems development is a unique blend of hardware, firmware, and software. It’s a world of memory-mapped registers, bitwise operations, and real-time constraints. It’s a field where a single line of code can have a physical consequence, where debugging often requires a logic analyzer and an oscilloscope, and where the difference between a good engineer and a great one is often measured in microseconds and kilowatts.
HR’s reality, however, is a world of metrics: time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and applicant tracking system (ATS) performance. To them, a job description is a search query. The more keywords and “must-have” requirements, the better the ATS will perform, or so they believe. The unfortunate side effect is that this approach filters out the very people you need to hire. A senior engineer with 15 years of experience in embedded C might not have 5 years of experience in a specific, obscure RTOS that your HR team has flagged as “required.” An exceptional firmware engineer who has self-taught Python to automate their build process might be rejected because their resume doesn’t explicitly state “proficient in Python scripting.”
The result is a a recruitment process that is fundamentally broken, where the best candidates are overlooked in favor of those who have simply optimized their resumes to match a flawed search algorithm.
Identifying the Red Flags: Common HR Misconceptions
Before you can push back, you need to be able to identify the specific requirements that are causing the problem. Here are some of the most common red flags you’ll see in HR-generated job descriptions for embedded roles:
- The “Years of Experience” Trap: HR often insists on a specific number of years for a particular skill. “Must have 5+ years of experience with C++.” This is a meaningless metric in our world. An engineer who has spent 5 years debugging a legacy codebase in C++ might be far less effective than a junior engineer who has spent 2 years on a greenfield project, architecting a modern, object-oriented system. Experience is not a linear measure. It’s about depth, breadth, and quality of work.
- The “Technology Stack Checklist”: This is a classic. The job description becomes a laundry list of every technology your team uses. “Experience with RTOS, FreeRTOS, Linux kernel, bare-metal, I2C, SPI, UART, BLE, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, C, C++, Python, Rust, and Jira.” While all of these might be relevant, it’s highly unlikely that one person will be an expert in all of them. This creates a tiny, and likely non-existent, candidate pool. The best embedded engineers are quick learners. They have a strong foundation in a few key areas and the ability to adapt to new technologies. A laundry list of skills suggests a lack of understanding of what’s truly critical for the role.
- The “Seniority Inflation”: HR often wants to hire a “Senior Embedded Engineer” but offers a salary and responsibilities more suited for a mid-level role. This is a form of bait-and-switch that results in zero applicants. The market for embedded talent is highly competitive, and senior engineers know their worth. They won’t apply for a role that undervalues their expertise. The title and compensation must be aligned with the market and the actual responsibilities of the job.
- The “Academic Credential Overemphasis”: “Ph.D. in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering required.” While a Ph.D. can be a valuable asset, it’s rarely a necessary one for the majority of embedded engineering roles. A Ph.D. is a research degree, not a professional one. It signals an expertise in a narrow, specific area of research, not necessarily the broad, hands-on experience required to build and ship products. Many of the most brilliant embedded engineers are self-taught or have a bachelor’s degree in a related field.
- The “Unicorn Hunt”: This is the culmination of all the above. The job description demands a mythical “unicorn” with an impossible combination of skills and experience. They want a hardware designer who is also a firmware expert and an application-level software developer, with a deep expertise in AI/ML and a proven track record of bringing products to market. This type of job description is a red flag to any serious candidate. It signals that the company doesn’t understand the scope of the role and is likely to have unrealistic expectations for the person who fills it.
Your Battle Plan: A Practical Guide to Pushing Back
So, you’ve identified the problem. Now, how do you solve it? Pushing back on HR is not about being confrontational. It’s about being a strategic partner. Your goal is to educate, inform, and collaborate to achieve a common objective: hiring the best possible person for the job.
Here’s your battle plan:
Step 1: Gather Your Data
The first rule of any negotiation is to come prepared with facts. Don’t just say, “this job description is bad.” Show them why it’s bad.
- Market Data: Use salary and market data to show what a realistic compensation range is for the role you’re trying to fill. Sites like Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, and Blind can be a good starting point. Show them that their salary band for a “Senior Engineer” is actually what the market is paying for a mid-level role.
- Talent Pool Analysis: If you have access to a LinkedIn Recruiter license or similar tools, do a quick search with the HR-provided requirements. Show them the number of candidates who meet all their criteria. Then, remove one or two of the most unrealistic requirements and show them how the candidate pool size explodes. This is the most powerful tool you have. It demonstrates, in a quantifiable way, the direct impact of their requirements.
- Internal Case Studies: If your company has already hired embedded engineers, use them as a case study. “Hey, Sarah on the firmware team is one of our best engineers. She’s been with us for two years. She only had 3 years of C++ experience when she started, not 5. Her real-world experience was what mattered, not the number on a resume.” This humanizes the data and makes it relatable.
Step 2: Reframe the Conversation
Move the conversation away from a checklist of skills and towards a discussion of core competencies and role responsibilities.
- Focus on the “Why”: Instead of saying “We don’t need 5 years of C++ experience,” say “The core of this role is developing a low-power wireless communication protocol. The right person needs to have a deep understanding of memory management and bitwise operations. C++ is the language we use, but their ability to think about low-level hardware is more important than their years of experience with a specific language.”
- Create a “Must-Have” vs. “Nice-to-Have” List: This is a simple but effective technique. Work with HR to create two distinct lists. The “must-haves” should be the absolute, non-negotiable skills for the job. “Proficiency in C” or “Experience with real-time systems.” The “nice-to-haves” are the skills that would be a bonus, but not a dealbreaker. “Experience with Bluetooth Low Energy” or “Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines.” This forces HR to prioritize and gives you more flexibility in your candidate search.
- Shift the Focus to Problem-Solving: The best embedded engineers are not just coders; they are problem-solvers. Frame the role in those terms. “This role is for an engineer who can debug complex, intermittent hardware issues, and who can design robust, fault-tolerant systems.” This language is far more meaningful to a skilled engineer than a list of keywords.
Step 3: Educate and Collaborate
Your HR partner is not the enemy. They are a valuable resource who, with the right information, can be your greatest ally.
- Offer a Lunch and Learn: Propose a short, informal session for your HR team. Give them a high-level overview of what embedded systems are, what a day-in-the-life of an embedded engineer looks like, and what the key differences are between our discipline and general software development. Use analogies they can understand. Compare debugging an embedded system to being a detective, or explain that memory constraints are like trying to fit a symphony into a tiny room.
- Invite them to a Team Meeting: Have your HR partner sit in on one of your team’s stand-up meetings or a project demo. This provides them with invaluable context and a tangible understanding of the work your team does. They will see firsthand the complexity of the problems you’re solving and the skills required to solve them.
- Establish a Feedback Loop: Make it clear that you want to work with them to improve the hiring process. Offer to review their job descriptions, provide feedback on their screening questions, and participate in intake meetings where you jointly define the role. This collaborative approach builds trust and ensures that your needs are being met.
The Payoff: A Faster, More Effective Hiring Process
By taking a proactive and strategic approach, you can transform your relationship with HR and, in the process, build a more effective hiring pipeline. You’ll move from a reactive state of trying to fix a bad job description to a proactive one of shaping the hiring process from the ground up.
The result? You’ll attract a higher quality of candidate, reduce your time-to-fill, and ultimately, build the high-performing embedded team you need to succeed. Pushing back on unrealistic requirements isn’t just about winning a small battle; it’s about winning the war for talent.
Connect with RunTime Recruitment
Looking to hire top-tier embedded talent or find your next career opportunity? RunTime Recruitment understands the unique challenges of the embedded world. Let’s connect and build something great.
