Firmware Engineering Intern

Location: Austin, TX Department: Software Engineering Employment Type: Intern Location Type: On-site

About Base

Base is America’s next-generation power company. We’re rebuilding the foundation of modern civilization–electricity–by deploying a vast network of distributed batteries that is transforming today’s fragile, centralized grid into a resilient and abundant system. We are engineers, operators, and creatives solving some of the most complex, interdisciplinary challenges of our time.

About the Role

At Base, we're building America's next-generation power company. Firmware is the layer where our software meets the hardware sitting on real homes, making millisecond-level decisions that keep the fleet stable, balance the grid, protect the hardware, and keep the lights on when things go wrong.

As a firmware engineering intern, you won't just observe how these systems work. You'll help build them. You'll contribute to the low-level software running on our batteries and inverters, get hands-on experience with embedded systems, and ship code that affects real members and real power flows.

This is one of the few places where the code you write moves electrons through actual hardware on the live grid. Reliability and precision aren't abstract here. They show up in whether someone's lights stay on.

What You'll Do

Build core firmware. Design, implement, and test firmware in C/C++ on bare-metal, RTOS, and embedded Linux systems running across our fleet.

Work close to the hardware. Develop and debug device drivers, communication interfaces, and low-level system behavior. Read schematics, interpret datasheets, and learn how software interacts with real circuits, sensors, and power electronics.

Contribute to fleet-critical systems. Help build the pieces that keep thousands of homes running, high-rate telemetry, automated fault detection and response, reliable communications on unreliable networks, fast commissioning, and grid-balancing control loops.

Ship under real-world constraints. Write code that has to be reliable, deterministic, and safe. Timing matters. Failures have physical consequences. Simplicity is usually the right answer.

Work across domains. Collaborate with hardware, power electronics, and platform software engineers to solve integration problems and deliver robust end-to-end behavior.

What You'll Bring

Solid understanding of C/C++, embedded systems concepts, and basic computer architecture.

Experience from coursework, side projects, or prior internships involving microcontrollers, RTOS, sensor integration, robotics, power electronics, or other embedded systems.

Interest in how real systems behave. Timing diagrams, interrupts, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and debugging actual hardware.

Clear, concise communicator who thrives in fast-paced, collaborative environments.

Builder's mindset. Curious, self-directed, and drawn to problems that actually matter.

Why Base?

Interns at Base work in the same codebases as full-time engineers. No toy projects. You'll learn from a team that's built and scaled complex systems across energy, aerospace, and hardware industries. Your code will go live, run on real batteries in real homes, and shape how Base enters new markets.

This isn't a typical internship. It's a chance to help rebuild the most important system in America. Come build with us.

About the Team

America's power grid is failing—electricity costs have risen even as generation gets cheaper, and blackouts are becoming more common. We're building the software that fixes it. Our team owns the entire stack: firmware that controls batteries in thousands of homes, trading algorithms that buy and sell power in real-time markets, distributed commanding systems that orchestrate a growing fleet as a single grid asset, factory software for our Austin manufacturing line, and the product experience that makes it all invisible to homeowners. If you want to write code that physically moves electrons, ships hardware, and reshapes critical infrastructure, this is the job.

Please note: Base is a startup, which means priorities shift and evolve quickly. Your role may expand or change based on the needs of the business at any given time, so the responsibilities listed may not be exhaustive.

Our Values

First Principles Thinking: Question assumptions. Principles > rules.

Operate at Base Pace: Focus on what matters, act quickly, and learn by doing.

Give & Get Feedback: Be direct, be humble, and maintain a growth mindset.

Everyone’s an Owner: Follow through on commitments and own results.

Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: Drive clarity and make calls with imperfect information.

Committed to the Mission: Rebuilding the grid is a big challenge. We work hard because we care deeply about the impact we’re creating. We work in-person. It’s not a 9-to-5. We are all-in.

Fun & Optimism Coexist with Grit: Collaboration and celebration coincide with the intensity of building real things.

Do the best work of your life at Base.