Halter is a New Zealand startup that builds solar-powered smart collars for cattle enabling remote herding, virtual fencing and health monitoring.
ABOUT HALTER At Halter, we’re on a mission to enable farmers and graziers to run the most productive and sustainable operations. Our customers are using Halter to break free from the time-intensive constraints of conventional practices. Imagine watching 500 cattle stand up and walk calmly towards their next break? No quad bikes, no dogs, no fences. Just a group of cattle walking at their own pace. People say it looks like magic. Our customers are revolutionizing grazing with Halter. It's changing lives and transforming an industry. People join Halter to do meaningful work. By joining us you’ll be solving challenging problems within a talented team and a culture built for high performance. Our team out-think, out-work and out-care. We’re committed to delivering real change in the world - this isn’t easy, and in truth, we love that it’s hard. We’re backed to deliver on a mission that matters by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund https://foundersfund.com, Bessemer Venture Partners https://www.bvp.com/, BOND, https://www.bondcap.com/ DCVC https://www.dcvc.com/, Blackbird https://www.blackbird.vc/, Promus Ventures https://www.promusventures.com/, Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures https://www.icehouseventures.co.nz/?utm_term=icehouse%20ventures&utm_campaign=Brand+Keywords&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=4064636360&hsa_cam=16902737884&hsa_grp=134004309485&hsa_ad=592971340272&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-1082530126230&hsa_kw=icehouse%20ventures&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY0J0DepRVFDmjQlAkJPbZuQnLSA5UVzUzOXYiPxkjX-SeVa513_BhkaAr-MEALw_wcB. To find out more, visit our LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/halter-limited & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifeathalter/. WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING - Design and implement robust embedded C/C++ firmware for our collars, running on FreeRTOS, with real constraints around power, memory and reliability. - Work on the communication systems that hold the fleet together: LoRa mesh networking, cellular connectivity, BLE, and the protocols layered on top (CoAP, OSCORE, protobuf) that keep devices talking to each other and to the cloud efficiently and securely. - Design and tune algorithms that live close to the hardware: signal processing for sensor data, timing and synchronisation across a mesh of devices, filtering and estimation problems where getting the maths right actually matters. - Take ownership of firmware end-to-end, from initial design, through implementation and testing, to mass deployment and ongoing production support across a large, live fleet. - Debug hard, intermittent, field-only problems using logs, telemetry and a genuine understanding of the system, not just guesswork. - Work closely with hardware engineers on the analog and digital interfaces your firmware depends on (sensors, radios, power circuitry) so the whole system, not just your code, actually holds up. - Contribute to the quality and reliability of the platform as a whole: better patterns, better tooling, better ways of catching problems before they reach a paddock. - Support and mentor other engineers through design conversations, code reviews and generous context sharing. WHAT YOU'LL BRING - Solid experience designing and delivering firmware for resource-constrained embedded devices, and the scars to show for it. - Strong C/C++ fundamentals and comfort working close to the hardware: interrupts, memory constraints, real-time behaviour, concurrency. - A genuine maths and/or physics background, or equivalent depth gained on the job. You should be comfortable reasoning about things like timing, signal behaviour, probability, or control systems, not just treating them as library calls. - Experience with wireless or networked communication systems (any of LoRa, BLE, cellular, mesh networking, or similar) and an interest in getting properly into the protocol details. - A strong sense of ownership. You want to understand why something works, not just that it works, and you follow problems all the way to root cause. - Comfortable working with low-level hardware and resource-constrained systems, and enjoy solving hard technical problems more than ticking boxes. - A strong team player who gives and receives feedback well. BONUS POINTS FOR - Experience with RTOS internals (FreeRTOS or similar), and reasoning about scheduling, priorities and timing guarantees. - Experience with GPS/GNSS systems, time synchronisation, or distributed systems that need tight timing coordination across many nodes. - Background in signal processing, control theory, estimation/filtering (Kalman filters, etc.), or applied statistics. - Experience with cellular or other IoT communication technologies (LTE-M, NB-IoT, eSIM, or similar) and the quirks of getting low-power devices reliably online. - Genuine curiosity about farming, animal welfare, or hardware that has to survive outdoors, unattended, on a live animal. We can teach the domain, but the curiosity has to be there already. OUR BENEFITS - Delicious snacks and drinks are available for your daily flow. - Healthy body, healthy mind. We’re partnered with Southern Cross Health Insurance to support your well-being. - We offer 6 months of fully paid parental leave for primary caregivers, 4 weeks of fully paid secondary caregiver leave and many other parental benefits that support you and your family. - Our personal growth is important. Halter offers an annual $1000 self-development budget to be used for anything that fuels personal growth. - Our time to recharge is valued, we’re offered wellness leave and unlimited paid annual leave. - Importantly, we offer an inclusive and attractive remuneration package made up of salary, benefits and an employee stock ownership plan. OUR OFFICE FIRST APPROACH There’s a reason you visit your friends in person, live with your family and don’t do dinners over Zoom. Humans are wired for connection. We b