Staff Engineer, Platform Firmware

Ayar Labs • San Jose, CA

11d • Onsite

About The Position

Ayar Labs is seeking a platform firmware engineer to own board-level and platform-emulation firmware used to enable, validate, and demonstrate its electro-photonic products. The role focuses on firmware running on STM32-based boards that emulate customer platforms, control external hardware, and validate embedded firmware running inside Ayar Labs’ and customers’ SoCs. It is a hands-on, system-oriented position at the intersection of hardware, firmware, and customer platforms, with influence on board design, validation strategy, and customer enablement.

The engineer will develop and maintain firmware for multiple board designs, lead board bring-up and sign-off in the lab, and work closely with hardware, embedded firmware, systems, validation, and customer-facing teams to improve platform functionality and resolve cross-domain issues.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• At least 4 years of platform firmware experience.
• Strong experience developing bare-metal platform firmware in C.
• Hands-on experience with STM32 microcontrollers or similar ARM-based MCUs.
• Experience with board bring-up, lab debugging, and hardware/firmware integration.
• Ability to review schematics and board designs and collaborate closely with hardware teams.
• Experience supporting multiple hardware platforms within a shared firmware architecture.
• Proficiency with Git-based development workflows.
• Comfort working in a fast-paced startup environment with high ownership.

Nice To Haves

• Experience controlling power, analog, or optical subsystems such as ADCs, DACs, regulators, or lasers.
• Familiarity with CMIS or related optical module management protocols.
• Experience developing test, diagnostic, or platform-emulation firmware.
• Exposure to customer SoC platforms, boot flows, or system bring-up.
• Experience with Make-based build systems and Python-based tooling.
• Background in high-speed SerDes or photonics-adjacent systems.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve platform-level firmware running on STM32-based systems for demonstrations, validation, and customer enablement.
• Develop firmware to control and monitor ADCs, DACs, regulators, laser modules, and other board-level components.
• Build and maintain firmware that emulates customer platforms without requiring full customer SoCs.
• Support firmware across multiple board designs, balancing reuse, configurability, and maintainability.
• Lead board bring-up and sign-off, validating functionality and readiness in the lab.
• Review schematics and PCB designs and provide actionable feedback to improve firmware robustness, testability, or system reliability.
• Coordinate with the embedded firmware team responsible for photonic IC control to establish clean interfaces and effective system validation.
• Develop board-level firmware that controls, exercises, and tests embedded firmware running inside Ayar Labs’ and customers’ SoCs.
• Partner with systems, validation, and customer-facing teams to debug complex cross-domain issues.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior