Firmware Team
Our team develops and maintains the firmware embedded in all of Zaber's products. It handles everything from communication protocols to reading sensors and driving motors. We coordinate closely with other teams: we work with the electrical team to bring up new PCBs, with the mechanical team to work out the best way to control their newest designs, and with customer support to design APIs that are as easy to use and fully featured as possible.
Outside of the firmware itself, we also maintain supporting services including firmware API documentation, custom unit and integration test frameworks, CI/CD services via Jenkins and Ansible, a SQL database of product metadata, and many other custom tools for development and production processes. All of our systems are Linux based.
We are a collaborative, detailed-oriented group, with skills in performant C++20, ARM, bare-metal development, real-time systems, electrical and mechanical engineering, control systems, protocol design, and more. We enjoy learning, solving new problems, and making really useful things!
Working to Make Automation Easier
At Zaber, we're always working to lower the barriers to automation. Join David Goosen from our Mechanical Engineering Team as he shares how we try to make that happen.
Building Embedded Skills - Experience from a Firmware Co-op
I first heard about Zaber through its outreach events at UBC. When I was searching for a co-op for my final term, Zaber’s strong reputation among design teams and recommendations I got from mutual friends made applying there an easy decision. I applied to the Embedded Software co-op position through the Zaber website. When I was applying, I was split between deciding whether to proceed with the firmware or software team because both suited my computer science background. I chose the firmware team and in hindsight, that was the perfect choice for me
Code and Culture: A Co-op's Perspective on Life a Zaber
My 4 months here at Zaber as a co-op on the firmware team were fantastic at showing me how companies should work. I applied and accepted my position at Zaber in a whirlwind after meeting them at a career fair just one day before the application deadline. The rush was worth it - after a quick screening followed by a more in-depth technical and personal interview with the team, I was offered the job. What really drew me in to Zaber was how un-corporate all the answers to my questions seemed, despite being quite a bit larger than any of my previous companies. They came off as a legitimately human-centric company (and have remained to do so), which was very refreshing to find
ZX Day
Our annual hackathon is a chance for anyone at the company to put together a team and deliver something that they think is worthwhile. It's a short burst of autonomy where oversight and process tends to take a back seat to creativity and elbow grease. A number of our products and internal tools started out as ZX projects. And even if you don't work on a ZX project, the final stretch is always exciting to watch and culminates in presentations and celebrations.
Parallel Axis Tripteron Concept
Zaber's R&D team does some interesting work in the name of experimentation and exploration and not always with a clear purpose in mind. Such is the path to innovation. A recent example is "Frogbot". .
Questions? Email Adam at ahurrell@zaber.com.