Principal Firmware Engineer – Digital ASIC
Blue Origin2 days ago
Remote, United States +2 moreStaff+
Base Salary
$269k - $377k/yr
Responsibilities
- Own the architecture, design, implementation, integration, and validation of embedded firmware for custom digital ASICs, including digital beamforming ASICs.
- Develop ROM and runtime firmware for beam pointing, analog calibration, FEIC management, SerDes links, secure boot, telemetry, and sideband control.
- Define hardware/software interfaces, register interfaces, control protocols, initialization sequences, interrupt handling, and hardware/software partitioning.
- Create firmware verification and validation strategies covering functional, integration, regression, and performance testing.
- Drive pre-silicon development and debugging through simulation, emulation, and FPGA prototyping, followed by post-silicon bring-up and characterization.
- Deliver production test firmware, diagnostics, release packages, and documentation to silicon validation, system test, and manufacturing teams.
- Develop automated firmware testing frameworks, continuous integration workflows, and hardware-in-the-loop validation environments.
- Establish coding standards, release practices, quality requirements, and risk mitigation for reliable firmware delivery.
- Collaborate with ASIC, verification, hardware, RF, communications, platform software, test, and manufacturing engineering teams.
- Provide technical leadership through architecture and design reviews, complex problem solving, and mentoring while remaining hands-on.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- 10+ years of experience in embedded firmware, low-level software, or hardware/software systems development.
- Extensive hands-on experience developing embedded firmware in C for bare-metal and resource-constrained environments.
- Experience architecting and delivering firmware for digital ASICs, SoCs, microcontrollers, or hardware accelerators.
- Strong knowledge of embedded processor architectures, memory systems, interrupts, DMA, peripheral interfaces, and hardware register programming.
- Experience defining hardware/software interfaces and collaborating with ASIC or FPGA design and verification teams.
- Experience developing firmware verification strategies, detailed test plans, and automated validation frameworks.
- Experience with pre-silicon firmware integration, hardware/software debugging, and post-silicon bring-up.
- Experience delivering firmware for silicon validation, system test, or manufacturing, including production testing and debugging.
- Ability to independently own complex firmware efforts, make technical decisions, and deliver against milestones.
- Preferred experience includes RF and communications systems, OFDM, digital beamforming, phased antenna arrays, and 3GPP specifications.
- Preferred experience includes communications ASICs, RFICs, beamforming processors, DSP systems, FreeRTOS, Zephyr, Arm Cortex-M, Rust, secure boot, firmware authentication, SerDes, CI workflows, HIL validation, and production diagnostics.
- Preferred qualifications include interpreting schematics, ASIC specifications, and component data sheets, plus experience with QEMU, Palladium, ZeBu, or FPGA prototyping platforms.
- Experience mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership across complex silicon development programs is preferred.
Benefits
- Relocation is provided.
- Benefits include medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, paid parental leave, short- and long-term disability, a 401(k) with up to a 5% company match, and an Education Support Program.
- Stock options are available to regular employees working at least 20 hours per week.
- Paid time off is up to four weeks per year based on scheduled hours, plus up to 14 company-paid holidays.
- Some employees may be eligible for discretionary benefits and bonuses based on role type and job level.
- The role includes a technical assessment as part of the interview process.
About Blue Origin
Blue Origin designs and manufactures rocket engines, reusable launch vehicles, and lunar transport systems for commercial and government customers. Its products include the suborbital New Shepard, the in-development New Glenn orbital rocket, BE-4 engines (used on ULA’s Vulcan), and the Blue Moon lander; revenue comes from launch services, engine supply, and space systems contracts, including a NASA Human Landing System award. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the company is headquartered in Kent, Washington.