Sr SDET– Firmware Automation - Boston, MA
$178,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 24 September 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role is for a Senior SDET focused on designing and building frameworks, harnesses, and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure for continuous firmware testing on real photonic hardware.
What you'll do
- Own the architecture and roadmap of the firmware test automation framework.
- Design and build stable automation for new firmware features and hardware.
- Build and operate hardware-in-the-loop test infrastructure, including bench and rack fixtures, device farms, and CI orchestration.
- Integrate firmware testing into CI/CD for automated build, flash, hardware exercise, and reporting.
- Debug failures across the full stack (firmware, board, instrument, fixture, test code) and partner with engineers to resolve them.
- Participate in firmware design reviews to influence testability and diagnostics early.
What you'll need
- 8+ years of professional software development experience, primarily on embedded products, including designing test frameworks and infrastructure.
- At least one automation framework or HIL system architected and built from scratch and adopted by other engineers.
- Strong Python: fixture and abstraction layers, hardware drivers, plugin/configuration architectures.
- Working fluency in embedded C/C++: able to read firmware drivers or state machines and write tests for edge cases.
- Experience owning CI/CD pipelines running tests on physical hardware (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or equivalent).
- Track record of delivering robust automation under fast-changing requirements and hardware.
Nice to have
- PhD, or MS with 8+ years in embedded test automation or firmware development.
- Experience testing firmware for optical transceivers, photonic systems, or precision analog/mixed-signal hardware.
- Familiarity with CMIS, OpenBMC, or DMTF/Redfish.
- Experience with Pytest ecosystem and test tooling for Zephyr or FreeRTOS (Twister, ztest, Renode, QEMU, or similar).
- Experience with optical and electrical test and measurement equipment.
- Thoughtful use of AI-assisted tools in test generation, triage, or analytics.
This role has been open 15 days — well below the 59-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
724
|
Median days open
59 d
|
Median salary
$168k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Lightmatter | All employers we track in this specialty (724 roles · 81 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 3 | 724 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 15 | 6035 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 15 d | 59 d (−44 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $168k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 123 open roles · median 64 d
- AMD · 62 open roles · median 31 d
- Micron Technology · 62 open roles · median 89 d
- NVIDIA · 56 open roles · median 60 d
- Lattice Semiconductor · 41 open roles · median 31 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 27 open roles · median 79 d
How we counted: 724 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 81 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 10 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.