Embedded Software Engineer
LightmatterJob Title
Embedded Software Engineer
Role Summary
Develop firmware and tooling for photonic optical transceivers used in large-scale AI compute clusters. Work on control, telemetry, monitoring, diagnostics, and stabilization firmware while collaborating with systems, digital, analog, and photonics engineers during bring-up and production releases.
Experience Level
Entry-level (2+ years of professional embedded software experience required).
Responsibilities
Owner of firmware components through the full development lifecycle and partner with hardware teams for system integration and debugging.
- Define requirements and deliver firmware modules for control, telemetry, diagnostics, and monitoring.
- Design, implement, and refine photonic control and stabilization loops on embedded targets.
- Support new board bring-up and debug using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, JTAG, and GDB.
- Participate in control and diagnostics design reviews and document results for cross-functional teams.
- Develop test tooling and system bring-up scripts to validate firmware and hardware interactions.
Requirements
Core technical requirements and desired skills. "Must-have" items first; "Nice-to-have" items follow.
- Must-have: Proven experience delivering firmware to production hardware with ownership of components.
- Proficiency in C or C++ on resource-constrained targets and Python for prototyping, test creation, and data analysis.
- Strong understanding of embedded communication buses and peripherals (SPI, I2C, GPIO, UART) and HW–SW co-integration.
- Hands-on lab debugging skills using JTAG/GDB, logic analyzers, and oscilloscopes.
- Familiarity with Git and build toolchains such as CMake.
- Ability to operate independently with guidance at key milestones and collaborate across electrical, photonics, and systems teams.
- Capacity to comply with U.S. export control laws.
- Nice-to-have: Experience with bare-metal firmware and RTOS (Zephyr, FreeRTOS); hardware-in-the-loop test setups, firmware CI/test automation, Embedded Linux and device driver development, and experience with optical transceivers or high-precision analog/mixed-signal hardware.
Education Requirements
BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. The posting specifies 2+ years of professional embedded software engineering experience.
About the Company
Company: Lightmatter
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Lightmatter develops photonic AI data-center infrastructure and optical chips for extreme-scale AI and HPC. The company invented the Passage 3D‑stacked photonics engine to provide high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects across large-scale processors and raised $400M in Series D financing at a reported $4.4B valuation.
