Embedded systems are becoming more capable, more connected, and more complex. At the same time, expectations around delivery speed, quality, safety, and maintainability continue to rise. While hardware has advanced rapidly, embedded software development practices have struggled to keep pace, forcing teams to rethink how firmware is designed, built, and validated.

In this keynote, we’ll explore what embedded development may look like by 2035 and the forces already shaping that future today. Using the Embedded Technology Atlas as a framework, we’ll examine emerging and accelerating trends such as AI-assisted development, simulation-first workflows, application-centric architectures, and continuous quality pipelines. Rather than focusing on speculation, this talk highlights practical signals already visible across modern embedded teams.

Attendees will gain a clearer understanding of how the role of the embedded engineer is evolving, what aspects of firmware development are changing, and which fundamentals, such as timing, hardware constraints, and engineering responsibility, remain constant. This session is designed to help developers, technical leads, and engineering managers better prepare for the next decade of embedded systems development.

Topics covered in this keynote will include:

• Forces shaping the future of embedded software development
• The role of AI and automation in firmware workflows
• Simulation-first and application-centric design approaches
• How embedded engineering roles are evolving
• What will change and what will not by 2035