Senior Firmware Engineer

Job Title

Senior Firmware Engineer

Role Summary

Owner of pre-silicon verification for embedded firmware that controls high-performance power management ICs used in data center, AI accelerator, networking, and computing platforms. Work on the Infrastructure Power team to verify firmware–hardware interactions and find firmware, RTL, and interface defects before silicon.

Experience Level

Senior-level role. Years of experience not specified.

Responsibilities

The engineer will plan and execute verification activities for ARM Cortex-M based firmware in simulation environments and collaborate with cross-functional teams to resolve issues and improve testability.

• Build, maintain, and enhance SystemVerilog simulation tests and environments that execute ARM Cortex-M firmware with RTL and hardware models.
• Verify firmware behavior across reset, boot, initialization, configuration, sequencing, telemetry, protection, fault handling, and recovery scenarios.
• Analyze C and assembly firmware at source, instruction, register, memory, interrupt, and peripheral levels to diagnose functional and timing failures.
• Develop directed, constrained-random, negative, stress, boundary, and error-injection tests.
• Run regressions, triage failures, and perform waveform, log, memory, and register analysis to isolate issues to firmware, RTL, models, testbench, or tools.
• Define and track requirements, functional coverage, code coverage, and regression quality; identify gaps and drive closure.
• Create automation for build and test execution, result checking, log parsing, failure classification, reporting, and CI using Python, Perl, or similar.
• Collaborate with firmware developers, RTL designers, architects, and validation engineers to reproduce defects and verify fixes.
• Document verification plans, test procedures, coverage results, debug findings, known issues, and release-readiness assessments.

Requirements

Concise list of required technical skills and verification experience. Education requirements are listed separately below.

• Must-have:
  • Deep knowledge of C and assembly firmware for ARM Cortex-M (exceptions/interrupts, memory maps, startup code, registers, peripherals, low-level debugging).
  • Experience in firmware verification, embedded firmware testing, firmware development, or pre-silicon verification.
  • Ability to debug firmware–hardware interactions using simulation logs, waveforms, memory/register traces, and source-level analysis.
  • Proficiency in Python, Perl, or similar for verification automation and regression infrastructure.
  • Familiarity with embedded interfaces such as I2C, PMBus, SPI, UART, or similar protocols.
  • Experience with test planning, test-case design, negative/boundary testing, regression analysis, defect isolation, and coverage closure.
  • Strong analytical, problem-solving, written communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Nice-to-have:
  • Experience verifying PMIC firmware, digital power management, voltage regulation, sequencing, telemetry, or protection features.
  • Hands-on experience with SystemVerilog-based pre-silicon simulation environments and waveform/debug tools (SimVision, Verdi, etc.).
  • Working knowledge of RTL design and firmware-controlled digital subsystems.
  • Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated regression farms, test dashboards, and scalable failure-triage workflows.
  • Experience improving firmware testability via assertions, monitors, scoreboards, reference models, hooks, or diagnostic instrumentation.
  • Exposure to QEMU, emulation, FPGA prototyping, virtual platforms, UVM, or other structured verification methodologies.

Education Requirements

BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field (explicitly listed in the posting).

About the Company

Company: Renesas

Headquarters: Hitachinaka, Japan

Renesas is a global leader in embedded semiconductor solutions, providing high-quality products across automotive, industrial, infrastructure, and IoT sectors. With over 22,000 employees in more than 30 countries, the company focuses on scalable solutions that enhance user experience and drive innovation while committed to sustainability and energy efficiency.