$146,000 - $218,000 USD yearly
About the role
Ayar Labs is seeking an Embedded Firmware Engineer to drive firmware design from inception to customer deployment, supporting hardware validation and integration. The role focuses on embedded firmware for controlling high-speed SerDes interfaces and electronic/photonic subsystems.
What you'll do
- Design, develop, and optimize embedded firmware for controlling high-speed SerDes interfaces and electronic/photonic subsystems.
- Collaborate with analog/mixed-signal, digital, and photonic block designers to develop control algorithms for photonic circuits and define embedded requirements for multi-chip package systems.
- Write unit tests and integration tests for firmware modules, conduct code reviews, and support firmware CI/CD practices.
- Develop and execute firmware test code to support silicon power-on and bring-up, debugging hardware-firmware interactions on first silicon.
- Partner with hardware, validation, systems, and software teams across the product development lifecycle.
- Maintain technical documentation including APIs, firmware architecture documents, module specifications, and build/release notes.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's in Electrical/Computer Engineering or a related field with 3+ years of relevant industry experience.
- Experience in bare-metal embedded firmware development with strong programming skills in C.
- Experience with microcontrollers and firmware debugging tools.
- Proficiency with version control workflows (e.g., Git), firmware development tools, and CI/CD tools.
- Direct silicon bring-up experience.
- Scripting experience with high-level languages such as Python, alongside Make-based build flows.
Nice to have
- Ability to own the architecture and development of firmware modules from scratch.
- Experience in embedded firmware development for high-speed electronics and photonics applications.
- Silicon bring-up experience for high-speed SerDes and photonics applications.
More semiconductor jobs: Firmware engineer jobs · San Jose jobs
This role has been open 12 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 | Ayar Labs | All employers we track in this specialty (764 roles · 86 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 9 | 764 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 24 | 6531 · 156 employers |
| Median days open | 95 d | 54 d (+41 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.
