Senior Firmware SW Engineer - Tel Aviv-Yafo, Tel Aviv District, Israel
Originally posted 4 October 2026 by the employer.
This role involves developing embedded firmware for Astera Labs' CXL, Ethernet, NVLink, PCIe, and UALink semiconductor-based technologies.
About the role
This role involves developing embedded firmware that brings Astera Labs' compute connectivity silicon to life, from boot and initialization through link management, telemetry, error handling, and diagnostics. This firmware runs on embedded processors inside chips that power AI infrastructure.
What you'll do
- Design, implement, and maintain real-time embedded firmware in C for high-performance connectivity.
- Develop low-level drivers, initialization flows, interrupt handling, and control logic for complex hardware blocks.
- Bring up and debug firmware in pre-silicon environments (emulation) ahead of tape-out, and on silicon after it arrives.
- Collaborate with architecture, design, and verification teams to define HW/FW interfaces and resolve issues across the hardware/software boundary.
- Triage and resolve firmware issues reported by validation, product applications, and customers.
- Develop and extend the company SDK, including APIs, device management, firmware update, telemetry, and diagnostics capabilities.
What you'll need
- BSc/MSc in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
- 10+ years of hands-on experience as a firmware engineer.
- Proven experience in embedded and real-time firmware development.
- Strong programming skills in C on resource-constrained, bare-metal, or RTOS-based systems.
- Solid understanding of processor architecture, memory-mapped registers, interrupts, and HW/SW interaction.
- Strong debugging skills on real hardware using JTAG debuggers, logs, and register-level analysis.
- Broad system-level understanding of silicon, firmware, SDK, host software, and platform interaction, with the ability to translate customer requirements into technical solutions.
Skills: embedded firmware, C programming, real-time, pre-silicon emulation, silicon bring-up, low-level drivers
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 60-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
716
|
Median days open
60 d
|
Median salary
$173k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Astera Labs | All employers we track in this specialty (716 roles · 79 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 4 | 716 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 12 | 5938 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 39 d | 60 d (−21 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $173k |
Skills observed across this category: embedded firmware, C programming, real-time, pre-silicon emulation, silicon bring-up, low-level drivers
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 114 open roles · median 63 d
- Micron Technology · 61 open roles · median 90 d
- NVIDIA · 59 open roles · median 58 d
- AMD · 56 open roles · median 34 d
- Lattice Semiconductor · 40 open roles · median 27 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 27 open roles · median 74 d
How we counted: 716 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 79 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 5 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.