Will Traditional Embedded Engineers Disappear in the Age of High-Level Frameworks?

Evolution of Embedded Software Engineering

Around the year 2000, embedded software engineers were typically electrical engineers who understood hardware fundamentals and could write low‑level assembly or C code to meet real‑time requirements. Their expertise spanned both software development in C and a deep knowledge of bits, bytes, and registers.

In the early days, developers worked with simple 8‑ or 16‑bit architectures, mastering them within a few months. Recent years have seen a shift to far more complex 32‑bit systems that incorporate data‑acquisition sensors, peripheral communication devices, and a growing array of protocols such as USB, DMA, TCP/IP, and Bluetooth. Mastery of these architectures often requires years of experience.

The rise of the Internet of Things has dramatically increased the demand to connect hardware devices to the internet, creating a talent vacuum: many companies struggle to find enough embedded C programmers.

To fill this gap, some firms have turned to developers with experience in Windows or mobile applications, relying on them to write real‑time embedded software. However, these developers usually understand only the high‑level application framework assigned to them and lack deep hardware insight.

Manufacturers now provide high‑level software frameworks and tools, handling the low‑level hardware work themselves. This enables both embedded and application developers to write software at a higher abstraction level without worrying about the underlying hardware.

While this model reduces costs and speeds product time‑to‑market, it also diminishes the importance of engineers who focus on bits, bytes, registers, and real‑time constraints. Traditional embedded C/assembly engineers risk becoming less relevant.

Future embedded engineers are expected to possess application‑development skills, knowing how to invoke APIs that control hardware, rather than understanding the hardware internals. They may lack the ability to debug hardware in real time or to work directly with registers, resembling high‑level Windows programmers.

Although lacking low‑level expertise is not entirely negative—high‑level development models allow teams without critical skills to continue progressing—deep‑knowledge engineers will always be needed to design the APIs that bridge software and hardware.

In reality, many high‑tech companies favor talent in machine vision, machine learning, and other cutting‑edge fields, often overlooking traditional embedded developers. Yet without engineers who can communicate with hardware, the promised advances in AI and vision cannot be realized.