Remote IoT Jobs

While some companies hire 'Remote IoT Engineers,' the roles are often more specialized. You'll find positions like 'Remote Embedded Software Engineer' (focused on device-level programming with C/C++ or Rust), 'Remote IoT Cloud Engineer' (focused on building the data ingestion and processing pipeline with AWS or Azure), and 'Remote Firmware Engineer.' To find the best opportunities, you should search for these specific job titles in addition to the general 'IoT' term.

Yes, there are many remote IoT jobs, but they often focus on the software side of the stack. Companies will typically ship you the necessary hardware (development kits, sensors, etc.) to your home office. Remote roles are most common for the firmware, cloud backend, and data processing aspects of an IoT system. While roles that require heavy hands-on hardware prototyping and testing may be hybrid, the majority of the software development can be, and is, done remotely.

You can absolutely land an entry-level remote IoT job by building an impressive home project. Buy a popular microcontroller like an ESP32 or a Raspberry Pi, connect a few sensors, and build a complete project. For example, create a weather station that sends its data over MQTT to a cloud dashboard. Put all your code (both the embedded firmware and any cloud-side code) on GitHub and create a detailed README with pictures and a video. This tangible proof is the ultimate resume.

A successful remote IoT engineer needs a 'T-shaped' skill set. You need a foundational understanding of electronics and microcontrollers. For the firmware, proficiency in C/C++ is most common, with Rust growing in popularity. You must understand a communication protocol, with MQTT being the industry standard. Finally, you need experience with a major cloud provider's IoT services, such as AWS IoT Core or Azure IoT Hub. This end-to-end knowledge is what remote employers are looking for.

For remote IoT roles, expect a practical, hands-on challenge. You might be given a take-home project where you need to write firmware for a specific microcontroller (which they may ship to you) to read from a sensor and send data to an MQTT broker. Or, you could be asked to design the cloud architecture for a fleet of devices. They are evaluating your real-world problem-solving skills across both the embedded and cloud domains.

A remote firmware engineer's day is a mix of low-level coding and hardware interaction. You will spend a large portion of your time in your code editor writing C, C++, or Rust for microcontrollers, focusing on memory efficiency and power consumption. You'll use tools like oscilloscopes and logic analyzers that are part of your home lab setup. Collaboration with hardware and cloud teams happens asynchronously via tools like GitHub and Slack. It's a role that requires deep focus and a meticulous attention to detail.

All three are used, but they serve different parts of the IoT stack. C and C++ are the long-standing industry standards for writing firmware on resource-constrained microcontrollers. Rust is rapidly gaining popularity in this space due to its memory safety guarantees. Python is most commonly used on more powerful single-board computers (like the Raspberry Pi) and for writing the cloud-side applications that process the IoT data. For the most opportunities on the device side, C++ is still the most pragmatic choice today.