Associate Engineering Manager- Embedded Product

An Amazing Career Opportunity for a Associate Engineering Manager- Embedded Product!Location: Cardiff, UK

Job ID: 51574

As Associate Engineering Manager – Embedded Product, you will lead a dedicated Agile team of embedded engineers in our Cardiff design centre, delivering the next-generation of Enterprise desktop and embedded readers for IDT. This new generation of readers will be based on a common and new product platform developed with HID PACS. This is ground-up engineering: the architecture decisions made now will define the reader portfolio for years.

This is a deliberately hands-on leadership role. You will lead the team — line management, technical direction, Scrum Master duties and stakeholder alignment — while staying close enough to the engineering work to make credible technical calls and to review your team's output with authority.

Your team will sit inside the PACS engineering organisation, which leads development of the common platform, while reporting into IDT Engineering. The team is newly formed, and building it is part of the role: you will recruit, onboard and develop its engineers.

The team will own the incremental features required for IDT's desktop and embedded readers, built on core technology developed by PACS. Reuse and harmonisation will hence be central to this model: platform capabilities are adopted where they exist, and genuine IDT-specific needs are met by extending the platform rather than diverging from it. Close collaboration with PACS engineering is therefore essential to the role.

The platform is built on ARM Cortex-M silicon running Zephyr RTOS, with security anchored in a Secure Element. Your team will own any specificities on the reader side, including applied cryptography and Secure Element integration, guaranteeing clear interface ownership and disciplined cross-organisation collaboration.

The role suits either an established team lead or a strong senior embedded engineer ready to step up; we will provide mentoring, coaching, and training to support the successful candidate. You will report to the Ecosystem Integration Engineering Manager, IDT.

Who are we?

HID powers the trusted identities of the world’s people, places, and things, allowing people to transact safely, work productively and travel freely.

We are a high-tech software company headquartered in Austin, TX, with over 4,500 worldwide employees. Check us out here: and

Identification Technologies (IDT):

IDT is creating trusted identities for IoT applications through Smart Components and Enabling Services.

HID’s Identification Technologies powers the trusted identities of the world’s people, places and things through smart components and cloud services. We make it possible for people and organizations to transact safely, work productively, and travel freely. Our contactless identification and sensing (RFID, NFC, and BLE) components and solution enabling technologies address the dynamic requirements across multiple industries to wirelessly connect, identify, collect and manage data quickly and accurately across virtually any IoT application.

As our Associate Engineering Manager- Embedded Product , you’ll support HID’s success by: Technical Leadership and Contribution

• Contribute directly and hands-on alongside your engineers — design, implementation, review and debugging of production reader technology on ARM Cortex-M under Zephyr RTOS.

• Drive multi-faceted technical issues to closure across software, hardware and Secure Element boundaries, including lab-based debugging and hardware bring-up support.

• Conduct design and code reviews, hold the team to the platform's coding standards, and raise the technical bar through example.

Team Leadership and People Management

• Build and lead the team from the ground up: recruitment, onboarding, objective setting, performance reviews, development plans and career progression for your engineers in Cardiff.

• Coach and mentor engineers at all levels, building depth in embedded security and platform engineering rather than dependence on individuals.

• Plan capacity and skills coverage for your team, identifying gaps early and addressing them through hiring, development or cross-site support.

Platform Integration and Cross-Organisation Collaboration

• Operate your team as an integrated part of the PACS engineering organisation: adopt its architecture governance, coding standards, branching model and release cadence rather than building parallel practice.

• Own delivery of the incremental features required for IDT's desktop and embedded readers, built on the core technology and architecture developed by PACS, ensuring requirements from IDT business lines and segments are understood, scoped and represented in the platform backlog.

• Champion reuse and harmonisation: actively seek platform solutions before building new ones, and where IDT's needs genuinely differ, make the case for extending the common platform rather than forking from it.

• Act as the primary technical interface between IDT Engineering and PACS engineering leadership, negotiating priorities, dependencies and architectural trade-offs, building the trust that makes a shared platform work.

• Coordinate contributing engineers from Krakow, Chennai and La Ciotat, ensuring work packages are well defined, interfaces are unambiguous, and reviews are shared rather than centralised in Cardiff.

• Work with Product, Hardware, QA, Architecture and Security teams across both organisations to translate product requirements into implementable engineering requirements.

Agile Delivery

• Serve as Scrum Master for the team, facilitating sprint planning, daily stand-ups, reviews and retrospectives, and removing impediments to flow.

• Partner closely with the team's Product Owner to refine the backlog, shape sprint goals and balance new feature delivery against technical foundations.

• Represent the team in PI Planning and ART ceremonies, committing to objectives, surfacing dependencies and risks, and holding the team to its commitments.

• Provide clear, honest delivery status to the Ecosystem Integration Engineering Manager and to programme stakeholders, escalating early when the plan is at risk.

Engineering Excellence

• Define and establish the test and continuous integration strategy for your team's deliverables, aligned to PACS platform practice, including unit testing, automated regression on target hardware, and build pipelines.

• Embed secure development practices (SSDLC) into the team's day-to-day work: threat-informed design, secure coding, dependency and vulnerability management.

• Identify and implement improvements to the development process in partnership with the Ecosystem Integration Engineering Manager.

• Document architecture, interfaces and design decisions so the platform is maintainable beyond its first release.

Education/ or Experience

• Engineering degree in Computer Science, Electronics or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

• 7+ years of professional embedded software development experience, including delivery of products from concept to production.

• Strong proficiency in C for resource-constrained embedded systems; confident with MCU peripherals (I2C, SPI, UART, USB, timers, ADC) and low-level debugging.

• Hands-on experience with ARM Cortex-M and an RTOS (Zephyr strongly preferred; FreeRTOS or equivalent considered).

• Experience of leading engineers, formally or informally: mentoring, technical direction, or acting as a team's technical focal point.

• Proven ability to operate effectively in a matrix organisation — delivering inside another engineering organisation's platform, cadence and governance while representing the needs of a distinct business.

• Fluent with git-based version control, code review practice, unit testing and CI/CD for embedded builds.

• Sufficient understanding of hardware design and its constraints — schematics, component selection, power, thermal and mechanical limits — to guide the team's technical decisions and collaborate credibly with hardware engineers through design and bring-up.

• Experience working within Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban) and a track record of continuous improvement.

• Excellent verbal and written communication across all levels of the organisation, and comfort explaining trade-offs to non-specialist audiences.

What we can offer you:

• Competitive salary and rewards package.

• Competitive benefits and annual leave offering, allowing for work-life balance.

• A vibrant, welcoming & inclusive culture.

• Extensive career development opportunities and resources to maximize your potential.

• To be a part of a global organization that is pioneering the hardware, software and services that allow people to confidently navigate the physical and digital worlds.

Why apply?

• Empowerment: You’ll work as part of a global team in a flexible work environment, learning and enhancing your expertise. We welcome an opportunity to meet you and learn about your unique talents, skills, and experiences. You don’t need to check all the boxes. If you have most of the skills and experience, we want you to apply.

• Innovation: You embrace challenges and want to drive change. You'll have opportunities to share insights and contribute forward-thinking ideas that shape future outcomes.

• Integrity: You are results-orientated, reliable, and straightforward and value being treated accordingly. We want all our employees to be themselves, to feel appreciated and accepted.

HID does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee-based recruitment services. We are not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

HID is committed to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce that reflects the global communities we serve. As an equal opportunity employer, we consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic. Our goal is to create a workplace that empowers everyone to thrive and be their authentic selves, fostering an environment of mutual respect and inclusivity.

HID may use AI-assisted technology to support our Talent Acquisition team in reviewing applications by identifying job-related qualifications, skills, and experience. AI is used as a support tool only and does not make hiring decisions. All applications are reviewed by a member of our Talent Acquisition team before any selection decision is made.

If you require assistance or accommodation during the application process or have questions about HID's use of AI in the recruitment process, please contact accommodations-ext@hidglobal.com.

Immigration Sponsorship Not Available

• Applicants for this position must be currently and legally authorized to reside and work in the hiring country.

• HID Global will not offer immigration sponsorship or assume sponsorship of an employment visa for this position.

• International relocation or remote work arrangements outside of the hiring country will not be considered.

We make it easier for people to get where they want to go!

On an average day, think of how many times you tap, twist, tag, push or swipe to get access, find information, connect with others or track something. HID technology is behind billions of interactions, in more than 100 countries. We help you create a verified, trusted identity that can get you where you need to go – without having to think about it.

When you join our HID team, you’ll also be part of the ASSA ABLOY Group, the global leader in access solutions. You’ll have 63,000 colleagues in more than 70 different countries. We empower our people to build their career around their aspirations and our ambitions – supporting them with regular feedback, training, and development opportunities. Our colleagues think broadly about where they can make the most impact, and we encourage them to grow their role locally, regionally, or even internationally. As we welcome new people on board, it’s important to us to have diverse, inclusive teams, and we value different perspectives and experiences.

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