Senior Embedded Firmware Design Engineer

Semtech•San Diego, CA

13d•Hybrid

About The Position

Semtech Corporation is a leading supplier of analog and mixed-signal semiconductors for high-end consumer, enterprise computing, communications, and industrial equipment. The Sensing Product Group in San Diego has expertise in system-level platform solutions for Sensing Products including Touch & Proximity. These are leading edge low power touch-interface solutions integrated with highly accurate ADCs for enhanced sensing performance. These ultra-small, feature-rich sensing systems are optimized for a wide range of battery-powered, portable applications such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, wearables, handheld devices and other consumer, industrial or automotive control applications. The Senior Embedded Firmware Design Engineer is responsible for designing, developing and validating a variety of firmware-based systems and functions. The role focuses on high-accuracy, low-power sensing platforms, including firmware for mixed-signal sensing SoCs with on-chip ADCs, proximity, touch and gesture recognition. Ahead of detailed design, the Senior Engineer, Embedded Firmware Design, will actively participate in the definition of the chip, systems, and blocks including interactions with application, system, digital hardware, analog, and cross functional teams. The role also includes innovation & technical leadership, mentoring and supervision of junior engineers, pre-silicon and post-silicon validations or their supervision, support to application and production test engineers, and definition of test methodology.

Requirements

8-10 years of industry experience in embedded firmware for mixed-signal integrated circuits
B.S. or M.S. in Electrical or Computer Engineering
Strong analytical, synthesis and problem solving skills
In-depth knowledge and experience in firmware development for mixed-signal ICs, HW-SW architectures and co-design, real-time embedded systems, data path, signal processing & algorithms, system trade-offs (power, speed, hardware resources, memory footprint)
Strong background with MCU based systems (ARM, RISC-V, PIC, STM32), architecture, and instruction set
Proficiency in C/C++ and assembly language programming, scripting languages (Python), debugging capabilities, industry leading embedded software suites (IDE), AI coding tools (e.g. Cursor, Claude, GitHub Copilot), and evaluation/validation of AI-generated code
Experience with bare-metal firmware development.
Design for test experience including implementation of testability and diagnostic features.
Experience with configurations, version control, release management, integration, unit and regression testing
Demonstration of technical leadership and innovation
Experience with standard hardware protocols (I2C, I3C, SPI, MIPI, JTAG, PCIe)
Hands-on experience with development boards, FPGAs, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, supplies, multimeters and the associated measurement methods
Independent, self-motivated, rigorous, innovating, team player and able to follow through
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Knowledge of system-level aspects: signal processing, mixed-signal, digital hardware, analog, modelling, test and application

Nice To Haves

Experience with system/digital design methods & tools, Matlab, SV/Verilog/VHDL etc.
Experience with consumer, industrial, or automotive market circuit developments

Responsibilities

Define, develop, verify and optimize embedded firmware for low-power mixed-signal circuits.
Design embedded firmware functions, sub and full systems, from specification definition to support to production.
Develop and deploy rule-based and ML-based inference firmware, leveraging AI-assisted development tools and workflows.
Implement testability and diagnosis features to support hardware testing.
Generate technical documentation and drive design reviews.
Define and implement pre-silicon simulation validation, unit and regression testing, debug, emulation, and FPGA prototyping.
Support top verification.
Specify and implement system-level and hardware-firmware architectures, from top-level specification analysis to system and firmware optimization.
Evaluate and specify CPU/micro-controller selection and ROM/RAM memory sizing based on system requirements and constraints.
Support silicon lab evaluation, performance characterization and debug.
Provide comprehensive post-silicon customer technical support, RMA analysis and field issue resolution.
Interface with system, digital hardware, analog, verification and cross functional teams.
Mentor and supervise junior engineers.
Technical support to test, product and application engineers.