Intern, Firmware

Ayar Labs • San Jose, CA

2d • Onsite

About The Position

Ayar Labs is seeking a motivated firmware intern for its Platform Firmware team, which develops firmware for multi-wavelength laser modules, optical engines, and management controllers. The work focuses on improving the reliability and observability of optical hardware, including telemetry, DevOps and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure, and analysis that can identify early signs of hardware degradation. The project will be tailored to the intern’s experience and interests. The intern will be mentored by a senior engineer and work alongside Ayar Labs engineers. The internship term is May through August 2027, and the position is on-site at the San Jose office. Immigration support is not available except for F-1 candidates; relocation support is not available.

Requirements

• Working knowledge of C, C++, and Python, and comfort with Linux and git.
• Hands-on experience debugging real hardware and a measurement-driven approach to problem solving.
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively, manage time effectively, and bring projects to completion.
• Actively pursuing a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

Nice To Haves

• Embedded firmware experience programming microcontrollers in C, bare-metal or on a small RTOS such as FreeRTOS or Zephyr, including peripheral drivers using I2C, I3C, SPI, UART, ADC, and timers.
• Lab instrumentation and test automation experience with oscilloscopes, multimeters, power supplies, logic analyzers, and thermal chambers, including programmatic control over SCPI or VISA.
• Firmware DevOps experience with CI/CD pipelines such as GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins; embedded unit-test frameworks; static analysis; coverage instrumentation; and build and artifact versioning.
• Data analysis and anomaly detection experience with large measurement datasets in Python using Pandas, NumPy, or SciPy; time-series trend extraction; and threshold- or model-based drift detection.
• Closed-loop control and signal-processing experience, including PID and similar control loops, sampling and filtering, and assessing loop stability against real sensor noise.
• Prior photonics experience is not required; willingness to learn the physics behind the measurements is valued.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to firmware and reliability work for laser modules, optical engines, and their management controllers.
• Develop or improve telemetry that makes optical hardware observable.
• Contribute to DevOps and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure for measuring firmware quality on each commit.
• Analyze accumulated telemetry to help identify early warnings of hardware degradation.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Intern
• Education Level: No Education Listed