For better or worse, most commercial embedded development is done in C/C++. If you are already familiar with these, start with Atmel Studio and an AVR 8 bit pr

For better or worse, most commercial embedded development is done in C/C++. If you are already familiar with these, start with Atmel Studio and an AVR 8 bit processor (easier to learn the hardware side, simpler processor) or mbed.org and one of the supported boards (STM32 Nucleos are cheap and have built-in JTAG programmer/debugger with a wide range of processors). Pay could be higher or lower, you will almost certainly take a cut initially but there are plenty of high paying embedded development jobs.