Principal Firmware Architect
About The Position
Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) develops infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft’s online businesses and Azure platform. The firmware architecture team defines firmware for complex systems-on-chip (SoCs), including the Cobalt general-purpose server processor and Maia AI accelerator, with a focus on safe, reliable, secure, high-performance operation and low total cost of ownership. The team works with silicon and Azure datacenter partners, using industry standards and platform-specific features to shape solutions for datacenter customers. The role offers the opportunity to work with advanced silicon and design firmware to maximize platform availability and performance. The Principal Firmware Architect designs and implements embedded firmware, contributes throughout product development, and defines scalable, reliable firmware architectures. The role works closely with hardware and cross-functional engineering teams on integration, SoC bring-up, platform initialization, bootloaders, board support packages, hardware interfaces, low-level features, operating-system primitives, debugging, testing, validation, and deployment.
Requirements
- Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field and 3+ years of technical engineering experience; or a master's degree in one of these fields and 6+ years of technical engineering experience; or a bachelor's degree in one of these fields and 8+ years of technical engineering experience; or equivalent experience.
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.
- Must satisfy export-control eligibility requirements for access to controlled information; citizenship or U.S. residency or other protected status will be assessed, and citizenship must be verified with a valid passport. Applicable alternative documents may be used by lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees.
Nice To Haves
- Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field and 5+ years of technical engineering experience with coding; or a master's degree in one of these fields and 8+ years of technical engineering experience with coding; or a bachelor's degree in one of these fields and 12+ years of technical engineering experience with coding; or equivalent experience.
- At least 1 year of experience working on or leading projects from beginning to end.
- Experience writing architecture documents for systems implemented by other teams.
- Experience with SoC bring-up and internal workings, such as internal fabric, power management, reset flows, and secure operational flows.
- Strong collaboration skills, including coordination with internal team members and external stakeholders.
- Experience with Rust is helpful.
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and implement firmware solutions for embedded systems.
- Contribute to all phases of product development, from initial design and architecture through manufacturing and productization.
- Define and develop firmware architecture for key systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance.
- Collaborate with hardware engineering teams to ensure seamless integration between hardware and firmware.
- Design, develop, and maintain firmware components, including driver interfaces, system libraries, and low-level hardware interfaces.
- Support SoC bring-up, platform initialization, bootloader development, and board support package (BSP) porting.
- Develop and optimize firmware for hardware interfaces and peripherals, including PCIe, NVMe, I2C, SPI, USB, and UART.
- Contribute to internal fabric and protocol development, and low-level hardware feature implementation.
- Implement and optimize operating system primitives, including memory management, scheduling, interrupts, and threading.
- Debug, troubleshoot, and resolve complex firmware and hardware integration issues.
- Provide technical leadership in firmware design, development, testing, and validation.
- Partner with cross-functional engineering teams to ensure successful system integration, product readiness, and deployment.
Benefits
- Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation; details are provided through Microsoft’s benefits and pay information page.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
