Firmware Engineer - San Diego, CA, United States
$115,000 - $135,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 28 May 2026 by the employer. Relisted by the employer on 19 September 2026.
Develop bare metal C/C++ firmware for STM32H7 microcontrollers and drive board bring-up for semiconductor test systems.
About the role
The Firmware Engineer designs, develops, maintains, and presents firmware and applications within the Electrical Engineering group. This role leads firmware development and board bring-up for STM32H7 microcontrollers and PC-based C++ interfaces used in semiconductor test equipment.
What you'll do
- Develop bare metal C/C++ firmware for STM32H7 microcontrollers, from pin assignment and board bring-up through peripheral drivers and hardware debugging using JTAG, oscilloscopes, and logic analyzers. - Develop and improve PC-based C++ graphical user interfaces supporting Ethernet, CAN, and serial communications, command scripting, and real-time graphing. - Implement firmware updates and modifications on legacy production products, analyzing older designs with limited documentation. - Support new electronic board development from initial pin definitions through firmware delivery. - Create and maintain firmware architecture documents, interface specifications, test plans, release notes, and customer interface guides using Git for version control. - Provide pre- and post-sales technical support and train customer engineers to interface with company equipment.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field. - Minimum of 8 years of experience in firmware development and application support for complex electromechanical systems or control systems. - Strong proficiency in C and C++, including Windows application development. - Experience with bare metal firmware on STM32 or similar ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers, digital circuit design, and board bring-up from schematics. - Hands-on experience with communication protocols including UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, and Ethernet. - Experience with bootloader development, Git, and motion control or control systems.
Nice to have
- Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field. - Experience with EtherCAT protocols. - FPGA development experience. - Experience with thermal systems. - Proficiency in German or French.
This role has been open 162 days — well above the 54-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
765
|
Median days open
54 d
|
Median salary
$169k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Cohu | All employers we track in this specialty (765 roles · 84 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 1 | 765 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 13 | 6277 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 162 d | 54 d (+108 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $169k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 126 open roles · median 53 d
- Micron Technology · 65 open roles · median 87 d
- AMD · 63 open roles · median 39 d
- NVIDIA · 58 open roles · median 57 d
- Lattice Semiconductor · 45 open roles · median 44 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 36 open roles · median 31 d
How we counted: 765 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 84 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 24 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.