Staff AI Product Engineer, FW/SW - Milpitas, California, United States
$208,300 USD yearly
Originally posted 15 October 2026 by the employer.
This role focuses on silicon photonics.
About the role
This is a senior individual contributor role operating at the intersection of silicon photonics, embedded systems, electronics, controls, and system software, responsible for translating photonic device and system requirements into robust control algorithms, firmware, APIs, diagnostics, and system-level software. The ideal candidate has developed firmware and software for complex embedded hardware systems and understands closed-loop control and real-time system behavior.
What you'll do
- Architect, develop, and maintain embedded firmware for control and management of silicon photonics products.
- Develop firmware that interfaces with photonic devices, ASICs/FPGAs, DACs, ADCs, temperature sensors, power-management devices, and other board-level electronics.
- Implement closed-loop control algorithms for parameters such as optical operating points, temperature, power, bias, alignment, switching state, and other device-specific control variables.
- Develop real-time and event-driven firmware for complex embedded systems.
- Develop device initialization, calibration, configuration, monitoring, fault management, and recovery mechanisms.
- Work with system architects to define the overall software and firmware control architecture of the product.
What you'll need
- BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Controls Engineering, Physics, or a related technical discipline.
- Significant professional experience developing firmware and software for complex embedded systems.
- Strong programming experience in C/C++ for embedded systems.
- Experience with Python or similar languages for automation, system test, data analysis, and hardware control.
- Strong understanding of embedded processors, microcontrollers, memory architectures, interrupts, timing, concurrency, and hardware interfaces.
- Experience with RTOS and/or embedded Linux environments.
- Strong understanding of feedback and closed-loop control systems.
- Experience with embedded communication protocols such as SPI, I²C, UART, GPIO, Ethernet, or similar interfaces.
Skills: embedded firmware, control algorithms, silicon photonics, real-time systems, hardware bring-up
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 56-day median for Embedded Firmware Engineering roles.
Embedded Firmware Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
723
|
Median days open
56 d
|
Median salary
$166k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | PsiQuantum | All employers we track in this specialty (723 roles · 82 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 2 | 723 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 34 | 6127 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 0 d | 56 d (−56 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $166k |
Skills observed across this category: embedded firmware, control algorithms, silicon photonics, real-time systems, hardware bring-up
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 117 open roles · median 65 d
- Micron Technology · 61 open roles · median 83 d
- NVIDIA · 59 open roles · median 57 d
- AMD · 58 open roles · median 35 d
- Lattice Semiconductor · 43 open roles · median 36 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 28 open roles · median 42 d
How we counted: 723 open Embedded Firmware Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 82 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 15 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.