Senior Firmware Design Engineer
Architect low-level firmware for high-performance RISC-V CPU bring-up, emulation, and silicon validation.
About the role
Ahead Computing is hiring a Senior Firmware Design Engineer to bring up, validate, and optimize high-performance RISC-V CPU designs and platforms. This role focuses on low-level firmware engineering across simulation, emulation, and silicon.
What you'll do
- Architect and develop low-level firmware for CPU bring-up, system initialization, and hardware abstraction.
- Create diagnostics and implement power and performance tuning routines.
- Define firmware interfaces for custom CPU features alongside architecture, RTL design, and verification teams.
- Validate CPU designs and platforms across simulation, emulation, and silicon environments.
What you'll need
- Experience in low-level firmware architecture and development for CPU bring-up and system initialization.
- Experience with hardware abstraction and firmware diagnostics.
- Background in power and performance tuning.
- Track record of collaborating with RTL design and verification teams to define hardware-firmware interfaces.
- Experience validating designs across simulation, emulation, and silicon environments.
- Technical background working with RISC-V CPU architectures.
More semiconductor jobs: Firmware engineer jobs · Oregon jobs
This role has been open 3 days — well below the 54-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
764
|
Median days open
54 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$173k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Ahead Computing | All employers we track in this specialty (764 roles · 86 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 2 | 764 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 5 | 6531 · 156 employers |
| Median days open | 73 d | 54 d (+19 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $173k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 110 open roles · median 63 d
- NVIDIA · 80 open roles · median 53 d
- AMD · 56 open roles · median 46 d
- Micron Technology · 50 open roles · median 75 d
- Lattice Semiconductor · 41 open roles · median 59 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 37 open roles · median 34 d
How we counted: 764 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 86 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 8 Nov 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.