Freelance Embedded Systems Engineer Jobs in Michigan

Embedded Systems Architect - Robotics & Drones

We are Aptiv - a global technology company with 200,000 specialists in 48 countries. We develop innovative software and build the hardware to bring autonomous driving cars, advanced driver-assistance systems, connected vehicles and smart cities to life in a way that only we can. We work in partnership with almost all car manufacturers. Our sensors, systems and software can already be found in almost all passenger cars today.

Aptiv is building a new Robotics business focused on Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and Drones for warehouse, industrial, and adjacent markets. A core differentiator of these systems is robust, reliable, and scalable perception across diverse environments and customer use cases.

We are seeking an Embedded Systems Architect to design, develop, integrate, and optimize robotics and drone hardware and software systems. In this role, you will contribute to the architecture, implementation, and deployment of embedded platforms spanning sensor integration, edge computing, autonomy, and machine learning-based perception technologies.

You will apply strong technical expertise to deliver reliable, scalable, and production-ready robotics and autonomous systems. Working closely with autonomy, localization, safety, hardware, data, and product teams, you will help ensure system capabilities meet performance, safety, and commercial requirements. You will also play a key role in transforming early-stage concepts and prototypes into robust, data-driven products that can be deployed across multiple platforms, applications, and customer environments.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Design & System Development

• Design, develop, and maintain embedded system architectures across AMR and drone platforms.
• Contribute to technical decisions involving sensing, compute platforms, data pipelines, perception algorithms, embedded software, and system integration.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and Technical Program Managers to ensure technical solutions align with product requirements, schedules, and business objectives.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, tools, and methodologies to improve system performance, scalability, and maintainability.
• Analyze and implement solutions that balance performance, latency, reliability, safety, power consumption, compute resources, and cost.
• Provide technical expertise and recommendations during architecture reviews, design discussions, and system trade-off evaluations.

Systems, Software & Perception Requirement Engineering

• Develop requirements for:
  • Embedded systems architecture and platform software.
  • Sensor integration and data acquisition for cameras, lidar, radar, depth sensors, IMUs, and related technologies.
  • Sensor data ingestion, synchronization, preprocessing, and transport frameworks.
  • Runtime inference, diagnostics, monitoring, and health management capabilities.
  • Interfaces and integration between perception, localization, planning, safety, and control subsystems.
• Develop requirements that support scalable, reusable, and production-ready robotics platforms.
• Contribute throughout the product lifecycle, from concept development and prototyping through deployment and maintenance.
• Translate customer, product, and operational requirements into effective technical solutions.

Product Development & Technical Execution

• Perform system bring-up, integration, validation, and troubleshooting activities across hardware and software domains.
• Resolve complex technical issues and support root-cause analysis efforts across hardware and software systems.
• Identify technical risks early and develop mitigation strategies throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to solve challenges involving embedded hardware, software, autonomy, safety, and system integration.
• Contribute to engineering process improvements that enhance product quality, reliability, and development efficiency.
• Support verification, validation, testing, and deployment activities for production systems.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Platform Integration

• Partner closely with hardware, SoC, and platform engineering teams to:
  • Evaluate sensors, compute platforms, and hardware acceleration technologies.
  • Optimize system architectures for performance, power efficiency, scalability, and cost.
  • Ensure robust timing, synchronization, communication, and bandwidth management.
• Collaborate with autonomy, localization, planning, controls, and safety teams to define system interfaces, requirements, diagnostics, and performance expectations.
• Participate in build-versus-buy evaluations of sensors, software frameworks, SDKs, and third-party technologies.

Quality, Reliability & Safety

• Develop and implement solutions that achieve reliability, latency, availability, robustness, scalability, and operational performance targets.
• Ensure systems perform reliably in challenging real-world environments, including changing environmental conditions, dynamic obstacles, and sensor degradation scenarios.
• Support safety engineering activities including hazard analysis, FMEA, fault injection testing, and degraded-mode operation validation.
• Implement monitoring, diagnostics, observability, and health-management capabilities to improve system reliability and serviceability.
• Analyze field performance data and support corrective actions, root-cause investigations, and continuous product improvements.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of experience developing embedded systems for robotics, automotive, consumer electronics, aerospace, drones, or related products.
• Strong experience designing and developing embedded software and systems.
• Experience working across hardware, software, systems, and product development teams.
• Strong understanding of embedded architectures, sensor integration, and real-time software systems.
• Experience with systems engineering, requirements analysis, and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE).
• Experience with requirements management tools such as Polarion, DOORS, or similar platforms.
• Proven track record of translating customer requirements into production-ready products.
• Proven ability to independently solve complex technical challenges and deliver high-quality products.
• Experience with system integration, validation, and troubleshooting.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with robotics software frameworks and middleware, including ROS and ROS 2.
• Familiarity with Agile development processes, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and DevOps practices.
• Experience with perception systems, sensor processing, computer vision, and machine learning technologies.
• Experience deploying ML-based perception or inference systems on embedded hardware platforms.
• Experience with Linux-based embedded systems and debugging tools.
• Experience optimizing software workloads on embedded CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, DSPs, or hardware accelerators under real-time constraints.
• Familiarity with Automotive SPICE, ISO 26262, functional safety, or safety-critical robotics development processes.
• Knowledge of cybersecurity principles and secure embedded system design.
• Experience with microprocessor-, MCU-, FPGA-, or DSP-based architectures and hardware/software integration.
• Experience with embedded communications protocols and interfaces such as CAN, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, UART, USB, and wireless technologies.
• Experience working in startup, incubation, or fast-paced product development environments.

Traits we seek:

• Curiosity-driven problem solvers who investigate deeply and think systemically.
• Confident leaders who empower teams, set direction, and earn trust.
• Hands-on learners with an experimental, builder mindset.
• Resilient thinkers who see challenges as opportunities to learn and improve.

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Aptiv is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.