Sr. Principal System Architect - OpenBMC Firmware

Job Title

Sr. Principal System Architect - OpenBMC Firmware

Role Summary

Lead the technical direction for OpenBMC and BMC firmware across Jabil's cloud, compute, and switching products. Collaborate with customers, product planning, sales, and internal development teams to define architectures, assess tradeoffs, and guide development through delivery.

Experience Level

Senior — role expects senior-level candidates. The posting specifies 15+ years of firmware design and engineering experience.

Responsibilities

Work with customers and internal teams to define and deliver BMC/firmware solutions and mentor engineering teams.

• Advise customers and product planning on technology tradeoffs and architecture decisions.
• Define system architectures aligned to product requirements with consideration for cost, complexity, and schedule.
• Establish technical direction for customer projects and internal product offerings.
• Coordinate cross-domain architecture with electrical, thermal, BIOS, validation, RAS, and OS teams.
• Communicate designs to development teams via handoff documentation and review implementation during development.
• Monitor vendor technology trends (CPUs, GPUs, storage, memory, FPGAs, MCUs) and evaluate impacts on firmware.
• Perform technical deep dives into new areas and contribute to architecture methods and processes.
• Train, mentor, and coach engineers; lead multi-engineer BMC and BIOS projects.

Requirements

Key technical and interpersonal requirements. Degree and explicit years of experience are listed under Education Requirements below.

Must-have

• Expertise in OpenBMC architecture, codebase, repository structure, and testing.
• Extensive Linux experience, including OS, kernel, and application-level familiarity.
• Experience with industry management protocols and standards: IPMI, Redfish, MCTP, PLDM, SMBus, I2C, I3C, SPI.
• Familiarity with firmware stack interactions on Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, or ARM platforms.
• Understanding of secure firmware concepts and standards: Secure Boot, SPDM, Platform Root of Trust, DICE, NIST SP 800-193; knowledge of cryptographic primitives and PKI (AES, HMAC, ECC, certificates).
• Practical software skills: C/C++ fundamentals, Python, familiarity with Git, CI/CD, and agile development processes.
• Ability to translate customer requirements into measurable engineering requirements and assess technical risk.
• Proven experience influencing teams, communicating technical direction, and mentoring engineers; ability to lead projects with multiple engineers.

Nice-to-have

• Familiarity with AMI MegaRAC and Aspeed BMC processors.
• Experience with modern BIOS architectures and server management (provisioning, deployment, service).
• Comfort reading block diagrams and performing system-level design tradeoffs.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or Electrical Engineering required. The posting also specifies 15+ years of firmware design and engineering experience.

About the Company

Company: Jabil

Headquarters: St. Petersburg, Florida, United States

Global manufacturing services and engineering company that designs and manufactures electronic components, precision mechanical systems, and provides supply-chain, NPI, and contract manufacturing solutions across industries including semiconductor, healthcare, automotive, and consumer electronics.