Sr. Firmware Engineer
About The Position
Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) develops infrastructure and foundational technologies that power Microsoft’s online services and Azure platform. The Host Services team supports the planning, quality, delivery, scale, and sustainability of Microsoft cloud hardware manufacturing. The Sr. Firmware Engineer will develop firmware and driver solutions for Microsoft custom silicon platforms, including MAIA AI accelerators and COBALT general-purpose compute, deployed across the Azure fleet. The role spans the product lifecycle, from architecture and design through silicon bring-up, validation, manufacturing, and productization, and involves close collaboration across silicon, hardware, operating system, and platform software teams.
Requirements
- Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field and at least 1 year of technical engineering experience; or a master's degree in one of these fields and at least 4 years of technical engineering experience; or a bachelor's degree in one of these fields and at least 5 years of technical engineering experience; or equivalent experience.
- At least 5 years of professional experience designing and developing firmware solutions.
- At least 5 years of experience with C, C++, and Rust, with a track record of delivering production-quality software.
- At least 5 years of experience with two or more industry-standard interfaces and protocols, such as PCIe, I2C, SPI, USB, and UART.
- 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.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with UEFI and ARM Trusted Firmware (ARM-TF).
- Experience using AI-assisted and agentic development tools to accelerate issue triage, debugging, root-cause analysis, and feature development.
- Problem-solving, debugging, and troubleshooting skills, including experience resolving complex hardware-software integration issues.
- Effective collaboration and communication skills across silicon, hardware, operating system, and platform software teams.
- Familiarity with ARM64 SoCs and Armv8 architecture, including boot flows, trusted firmware, and system initialization.
- Familiarity with AI-driven software engineering practices that improve developer productivity and software quality.
- Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field and at least 3 years of technical engineering experience with coding; or a master's degree in one of these fields and at least 6 years of technical engineering experience with coding; or a bachelor's degree in one of these fields and at least 8 years of technical engineering experience with coding; or equivalent experience.
Responsibilities
- Develop and maintain firmware and driver solutions for Microsoft custom silicon platforms, including MAIA and COBALT, deployed across the Azure fleet.
- Contribute across product lifecycle phases, from architecture and design through silicon bring-up, validation, manufacturing, and productization.
- Design and develop firmware components, including driver interfaces, SoC bring-up system libraries, low-level hardware protocols, and platform features.
- Participate in firmware architecture and technical design reviews to support scalable, reliable, and high-performance solutions.
- Drive hardware-software integration to enable new silicon capabilities and accelerate feature deployment across Azure infrastructure.
- Collaborate with silicon, board electrical, and hardware engineering teams to design, enable, and deliver platform capabilities.
- Partner with operating system and software platform teams to integrate and deploy technologies and features across the Azure fleet.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
