Firmware Development Engineer, Sr. Staff - Santa Clara, California, United States of America
$180,600 - $271,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 6 May 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role is responsible for the enablement of power management solutions for custom CPUs, defining and implementing embedded firmware to manage power and performance for the CPU subsystem within Qualcomm SoCs. The position also involves management controller firmware development across boot, RAS, debug, security, and runtime services.
What you'll do
- Drive firmware design, implementation, and verification in pre-silicon and post-silicon environments. - Define and implement embedded firmware to manage power and performance for the CPU subsystem within Qualcomm SoCs. - Assist in the definition of power management solutions for future generations of Qualcomm CPUs. - Participate in management controller firmware development covering power management, boot, RAS, debug, security, and runtime services. - Actively engage with open-source communities to contribute support for processor architectures, device drivers, and firmware features. - Collaborate with hardware power management, firmware teams, and SoC architects on platform bring-up, debug, diagnostics, and future designs.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field with 6+ years of Software Engineering experience, or Master's degree with 5+ years, or PhD with 4+ years. - 3+ years of work experience with programming languages such as C, C++, Java, or Python.
Nice to have
- MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or Computer Science with 5 years’ experience in embedded firmware development. - Proficiency in writing and debugging C and assembly. - Driver development experience in RTOS or OS kernel environments. - Development experience with embedded operating systems such as Zephyr, eCos, µC/OS, or FreeRTOS. - Experience developing for pre-silicon environments, including simulators and FPGA emulation. - Experience defining interprocessor communication interfaces between embedded controllers and the platform. - Familiarity with ARMv8 architecture; development experience for an ARMv8 platform is a plus.
This role has been open 171 days — well above the 55-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
764
|
Median days open
55 d
|
Median salary
$169k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (764 roles · 84 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 126 | 764 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 739 | 6277 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 54 d | 55 d (−1 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $169k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 126 open roles · median 54 d
- Micron Technology · 65 open roles · median 88 d
- AMD · 63 open roles · median 40 d
- NVIDIA · 60 open roles · median 58 d
- Lattice Semiconductor · 45 open roles · median 45 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 36 open roles · median 32 d
How we counted: 764 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 84 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 25 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.