Sr. Engineer, Embedded Firmware
$160,000 - $192,000 USD yearly
Bare-metal embedded firmware development for electronic-photonic chips with high-speed SerDes.
About the role
The Sr. Engineer, Embedded Firmware owns the firmware development lifecycle from inception to customer deployment, supporting hardware validation and integration. The role focuses on embedded systems, multi-chip package environments, and electronic-photonic chips with high-speed SerDes.
What you'll do
- Collaborate with analog/mixed-signal, digital, and photonic block designers to develop control algorithms for photonic circuits and define micro-architecture and embedded requirements for multi-chip package systems.
- Design, develop, and optimize bare-metal embedded firmware for controlling electronic-photonic chips featuring multiple high-speed SerDes.
- Provide technical leadership by mentoring and guiding junior engineers.
- Partner cross-functionally with hardware, software, validation, and systems engineering teams.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering or a related field with 2+ years of experience.
- Expertise in bare-metal embedded firmware development with strong programming skills in C.
- Experience with various microcontrollers and firmware debugging tools.
- Proficiency with modern version control workflows including Git.
- Familiarity with project management tools such as JIRA, alongside CI/CD tools.
Nice to have
- Experience in embedded firmware development for high-speed electronics and photonics applications.
- Silicon bring-up experience for high-speed SerDes and photonics applications.
- Experience scripting with Python.
- Experience with Make-based build flows.
- Experience writing firmware optimized for ARM CPUs.
- Ability to own architecture and development of firmware modules from scratch.
More semiconductor jobs: Firmware engineer jobs · San Jose jobs
This role has been open 156 days — well above 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.