Firmware Engineer II - Austin, United States
Originally posted 13 July 2026 by the employer.
Develop bare-metal C firmware for DDR5 PHY IP microcontrollers.
About the role
Cadence is seeking a Firmware Engineer II to join the Cadence DDR PHY IP Front End Design team. This role focuses on bare-metal firmware development for DDR5 PHY using microcontrollers.
What you'll do
- Develop firmware for DDR5 PHY using microcontrollers. - Write firmware in C involving bare-metal programming and implement low-level APIs on microcontrollers. - Collaborate with hardware designers and memory subsystem architects to derive and implement training algorithms. - Work with the verification team to deduce firmware-hardware co-verification plans. - Develop and debug firmware in RTL-based hardware simulations (C + Verilog simulations). - Develop and debug on silicon bring-up boards.
What you'll need
- Knowledge of DDR5 JEDEC spec, including different DIMM configurations and specifications. - Experience developing bare-metal firmware for high-speed SerDes or memory interface physical layer blocks. - Knowledge of C programming language for embedded software development and relevant IDEs. - Experience debugging RTL simulations involving firmware and microcontroller subsystems. - Knowledge of Shell, Perl, Python, or TCL scripting. - Experience with verification EDA tools such as simulators and waveform viewers.
This role has been open 122 days — well above the 55-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
760
|
Median days open
55 d
|
Median salary
$169k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Cadence Design Systems | All employers we track in this specialty (760 roles · 84 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 10 | 760 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 136 | 6298 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 60 d | 55 d (+5 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $169k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 126 open roles · median 52 d
- Micron Technology · 63 open roles · median 91 d
- AMD · 62 open roles · median 40 d
- NVIDIA · 60 open roles · median 56 d
- Lattice Semiconductor · 47 open roles · median 43 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 36 open roles · median 30 d
How we counted: 760 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 84 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 23 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.