Sr. Staff Engineer, Platform Firmware

Sr. Staff Engineer, Platform Firmware Engineer

Location: San Jose, CA (On-site)

Ayar Labs is shattering AI data bottlenecks by moving data at the speed of light. As pioneers of co-packaged optics (CPO), we are using light instead of electricity to move data faster, further, and with a fraction of the energy needed to fuel the explosive growth of AI models. Backed by industry giants like NVIDIA, AMD and Intel and manufactured in partnership with the world's leading semiconductor ecosystem, Ayar Labs' co-packaged optics solution is key to unleashing next-generation AI scale-up architectures.

We are seeking a Sr. Staff Platform Firmware Engineer to own the board-level and platform-emulation firmware used to enable, validate, and demonstrate Ayar Labs' electro-photonic products. This 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.

This is a highly system-oriented, hands-on role operating at the intersection of hardware, firmware, and customer platforms, with deep influence on board design, validation strategy, and customer enablement.

What You'll Do
• Own and evolve platform-level firmware running on STM32-based systems used for demos, validation, and customer enablement.
• Develop firmware that controls and monitors ADCs, DACs, regulators, laser modules, and other board-level components.
• Build and maintain firmware that emulates customer platforms, enabling realistic system behavior without requiring full customer SoCs.
• Support and scale firmware across multiple board designs, balancing reuse, configurability, and maintainability.
• Lead board bring-up and sign-off, working hands-on in the lab to validate functionality and readiness.
• Review schematics and PCB designs, providing actionable feedback to the hardware team when changes materially improve firmware robustness, testability, or system reliability.
• Coordinate closely with the embedded firmware team responsible for photonic IC control, ensuring 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.

Required Qualifications
• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field, with 6+ years of platform firmware experience.
• Strong experience with bare-metal platform firmware development in C.
• Hands-on experience with STM32 microcontrollers (or similar ARM-based MCUs).
• Proven experience with board bring-up, lab debugging, and hardware/firmware integration.
• Ability to review schematics and board designs and collaborate deeply with hardware teams.
• Experience supporting multiple hardware platforms within a shared firmware architecture.
• Proficiency with Git-based development workflows.
• Comfort operating in a fast-paced, startup environment with high ownership.

Preferred Skills
• Experience controlling power, analog, or optical subsystems (ADCs, DACs, regulators, 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.

Salary range: $170,000 - $223,000

NOTE TO RECRUITERS:
Principals only. We are not accepting resumes from recruiters for this position. Remuneration for recruiting activities is only applicable subject to a signed and executed agreement between the parties. Please don't send candidates to Ayar Labs, and do not contact our managers.

Ayar Labs is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is strongly committed to all policies which will afford equal opportunity employment to all qualified persons without regard to age, sex, national origin, race, color, ethnicity, creed, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. It is the policy of Ayar Labs to provide reasonable accommodation when requested by a qualified applicant or employee with a disability, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship. Veterans are more than welcome and encouraged to apply.